Star of the team

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the only face-saver in the team: adept, reliable, consistent and experienced. Enlistment into the team relied more on celebrity status than sporting merit, yet Doyle possessed both. His sporting repertoire was impressive: a good goalkeeper, an adroit golfer and a first-class cricket player for the prestigious Marylebone Cricket Club. Doyle was described by Barrie as ‘a grand bowler. Knows a batsman’s weakness by the colour of the mud on his shoes’.

Conan Doyle proved to be the exception in the Allahakbaries as a fabulous batsman and bowler. He was vigorous and formidable in sports from golf to alpine skiing. Holmes described Barrie as being no novice and delivering impressive lobs: his ‘insidious good-length lefthand ball’ from leg, was always likely to take wickets.

However, in retrospect, it seems that the erstwhile emphasis on off-side batting blocked out his prospects. Leg-side batting was seen as unruly and poor conduct. As for Barrie, when not disparaging his demerits, he took pride in his deceptively slow ball and sought solace in being ‘the slowest baller of all’. ‘My better class of bowling is “slow”’, he confessed in his writing.