Sporting notions of present days and past

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152 SPORTING NOTIO
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get right on and made a most lusty off-drive, one
of the sort of hits where the ball appears to travel
straight almost without any curve at all in its
trajectory till it begins to drop. Lucas was
fielding at a sort of sharp long-off in front of the
pavilion rails, and had to run to the old Press
hutch—say, forty yards. Along came the leather
forty thousand miles an hour, more or less.
Right on the boundary, the then Surrey amateur,
going at full speed across its line, reached the ball
with his left hand only just clear of the ground.
You heard a smack, and he had made the catch.
The folk right over in the far corner under the
gasometer, which got into Dick Humphreys's eye,
heard it all that distance off. No other sound
was there on the ground till everybody who saw
had taken a long breath, and then went up the
greatest cheer of my time—on a cricket-field,
that is, and perhaps, barring the ovation which
was Jessop's portion at the Oval, and the demon-
stration enveloping the Yorkshiremen, Hirst and
Rhodes, when they pulled the big match out
of the fire, a strong enough one to make a
record.