He began to realize the eternal truth
of the proverb about half a loaf and no bread. In the first flush of his
resentment against his new surroundings he had refused to play cricket.
And now he positively ached for a game. Any sort of a game. An innings
for a Kindergarten _v_. the Second Eleven of a Home of Rest for
Centenarians would have soothed him. There were times, when the sun
shone, and he caught sight of white flannels on a green ground, and
heard the "plonk" of bat striking ball, when he felt like rushing to
Adair and shouting, "I _will_ be good. I was in the Wrykyn team three
years, and had an average of over fifty the last two seasons. Lead me to
the nearest net, and let me feel a bat in my hands again."
But every time he shrank from such a climb down. It couldn't be done.
What made it worse was that he saw, after watching behind the nets once
or twice, that Sedleigh cricket was not the childish burlesque of the
game which he had been rash enough to assume that it must be. Numbers do
not make good cricket. They only make the presence of good cricketers
more likely, by the law of averages.
Mike soon saw that cricket was by no means an unknown art at Sedleigh.
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