Opening The Innings

If the dye works’ team were to lose the cricket match, Harold would be their secret weapon!

NOBODY could have accused Harold Wharton of being a keen sportsman. He had heard several of his more sporty colleagues at Hoyle & Dawkins’s dye works being described as “natural ball players”, but whatever that ambiguous phrase implied, Harold knew that it would never be applied to him.

When he was a schoolboy, and the other kids chose teams for a playtime kick-around, Harold was always the last to be picked.

The humiliation of it mentally scarred him, though, in everyday life, it never showed. After all, one was seldom called upon, say, to dribble a football or deliver a perfect cover-drive the length of dye vats.

Once a year, however, he found himself obliged to take part in a sporting contest. In the afternoon of the first Sunday of every September, the firm of Hoyle & Dawkins Ltd. played its traditional annual cricket match against Battersbys, the dye works’ best customer.

Harold wondered if an event that had been running for a mere five years could reasonably be described as traditional, but he didn’t like to argue with Willie Dawkins.

The fixture was billed as a social event, but Willie treated it as a major strategic challenge. His approach to his team selection was laborious and meticulous.

His main purpose in choosing with such care was to ensure he picked a side that could lose gracefully, whilst appearing to be making every effort to win.

It would have been the height of bad manners to inflict defeat on his company’s best customer, whilst it would have been equally impolite – demeaning, even – to look as though he were purposely allowing Battersbys to win.

The previous year, Willie, much to his secret chagrin, had picked his team in too much of a hurry, and, despite Harold’s scoring a reliable duck in the middle order, had won the match.

This time, things had to be different.

One lunchtime, whilst Harold was in the canteen battling his way through Mrs Earnshaw’s steak pudding, he was approached by Willie Dawkins. Willie rarely appeared in the canteen, and Harold was initially too surprised to listen to what he was asking. Willie had to repeat himself.

“What I said was, when you’ve finished your dinner, would you mind popping along to my office? There’s no need to rush your food; it’s not urgent.”

Harold, in a state of immediate panic, was outside Willie’s office before Willie made it back there himself.

“What is it, Mr William?” Harold asked nervously.

“Nothing much.” Willie shrugged. “You know it’s the big match next Sunday?”

“Oh, that. Oh, yes! I’m looking forward to it,” Harold lied.

“Good,” Willie replied, giving Harold a look he couldn’t quite fathom, followed by a silence a little too long for Harold’s comfort.

“Yes?” Harold said, when the tension got too much for him.

“I’m making a few changes in the batting order,” Willie explained.

“Yes?” Harold said again, hoping to sound interested.

“I want you to open the innings.”

Harold looked round to see who Willie was

Harold’s batting technique was, at best, limited

addressing, realised it was him and felt an immediate and urgent need to sit down.

He opened and shut his mouth a few times before any words would come out.

“Why would you do that?” he managed.

“Well, we don’t want to win again, do we?” was Willie’s enigmatic reply as he hurried from the office before Harold could speak.

Willie had certainly said nothing to lessen Harold’s sense of worry and bafflement and, as always, he discussed his ill-ease with Ethel at the earliest opportunity.

It was just possible that Ethel knew even less about cricket than Harold did himself, but her husband was clearly in some distress and needed her support.

“I’m sure it will work out all right,” she assured him, patting his cheek.

She felt that this reassurance seemed a little inadequate, and wondered what other comfort she could offer.

“I’ll come and watch, if you like,” she added. “Do you want me to have a word with the referee?”

“Umpire. No, I don’t think so,” Harold replied. “To be honest, Eth, I’d sooner you didn’t come to the game at all, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to make a fool of myself in front of my wife as well as my workmates.”

For two nights before the fixture, Harold had hardly any sleep. He lay in bed brooding over his coming ordeal.

In the early parts of the night his imagination was on his side, and he played an innings of sustained brilliance for twenty-odd not out, and was carried shoulder-high from the pitch. But, in the small, insomniac hours, he was out first ball, time and time again.

He asked his team mates what he ought to do, but all the advice he got was “Keep a straight bat”, which Harold found confusing. He was not aware that there was any other sort.

Admittedly, some of the old bats that Dwellett Cricket Club lent them were a shade bowed in the blade, but they were surely meant to be straight, weren’t they?

The advice added a further dimension of puzzlement to Harold’s nocturnal fretting.

Even the most casual observer could hardly fail to notice that Harold’s batting technique was, at best, limited. He had two strokes, neither of which would be found in any coaching manual.

Harold himself had never sought to name them, but anyone with a compulsion to classify everything might well have called them the Forward Lunge and the Leg Swipe.

Harold employed them more or less at random, which did not matter much, because he invariably closed his eyes as he played his shot.

The first Sunday in September dawned bright and clear.

Harold stood at his bedroom window and stared glumly at the strong, clear shadows cast by the street lampposts. He sighed heavily.

It was going to be a beautiful day; there was no chance of rain stopping play. He put on his slippers and dressing-gown and went downstairs to grumble at his breakfast.

By the time he reached the cricket ground at eleven o’clock his mood had softened to one of gloomy resignation.

He went into the pavilion, hung up his jacket and changed his shoes for the old pair of plimsolls that constituted his cricket gear.

He was ready for battle.

Battersbys were batting first.

Willie took great care with his field placing before taking his accustomed place as wicket-keeper and allocating Harold his usual position at deep long-stop.

“I was thinking of putting you in the covers,” he explained to Harold (incomprehensibly), “but extra cover needs to be agile, and you move like a constipated camel.”

Harold was somewhat offended by this offhand rudeness. In any case, he doubted that Willie had ever even seen a constipated camel, and would not know one if he fell over it.

From deep long-stop, Harold also had a long way to move between overs, but he told himself that the exercise would be good for him.

Battersbys made eighty-two for six in their allotted twenty overs, which were finished far too quickly for Harold’s liking – apart from the two overs he had to bowl himself.

These seemed as interminable as they were expensive – more than a quarter of Battersbys’ total came off them.

Even so, his own turn to bat was upon him much too soon.

It would be nice to say that Harold strode confidently to the wicket, but, in fact, he crept to the wicket like a condemned man approaching the gallows.

He took his guard – “Centre, please”, as he had heard other batsmen say – and looked round the field in what he assumed was a professional fashion.

He had seen that done before too, though he felt it unlikely he would gain anything useful from it.

The first two balls were far enough from straight for Harold to safely ignore them, but the third, he felt, demanded a forward lunge.

The top-edged ball ballooned high over the wicket-keeper’s head, and (as he told Ethel later) sped to the boundary. In fact, it trickled to the boundary just a little quicker than square-leg could run round and cut it off.

The bowler called for a bye off the fourth ball, and the over finished without further incident.

Harold found himself in the unexplored territory of being at the crease for a second over, but not, alas, for long. The bowler was dauntingly fast and unsportingly accurate, and Harold, attempting a leg swipe, was out LBW to the first ball.

Despite his dismissal, he made his way back to the pavilion with a frisson of pride; he had just notched up his highest-ever score.

Willie Dawkins, who had promoted himself to number three in the hope that he could get Battersbys’ best player to run himself out, was bowled first ball – much to his chagrin – and watched in frustration as the dye house team moved inexorably towards Battersbys’ total.

Wickets fell steadily, too, but not quite quickly enough to calm Willie’s jitters.

On the fourth ball of a nail-biting final over, Willie’s tail-ender – who should have been Harold, of course – played a surprisingly elegant legglance to the boundary, and Hoyle & Dawkins had won by a single wicket.

Willie was furious, and wondered briefly who to sack.

Battersbys, however, were magnanimous in defeat, and both teams sat down to the giant meat and potato pie that Battersbys had provided.

Unfortunately, they had to eat it cold. No-one had remembered to get hold of the key to the cricket club kitchen.

It made no difference to Harold. He went home in a state of elation – and, to be honest, just a little bit tiddly – and told Ethel, with a satisfaction that almost bordered on smugness, that Hoyle & Dawkins would probably not have achieved their famous victory had it not been for him. n