by Arunabha Sengupta
Aug 13, 1902.
England need 263 to win, they collapse to 48 for 5. The crouching form of Gilbert Jessop walks in.
He hits a 76-ball hundred, some claim even faster. Has a rollicking partnership with Stanley Jackson.
When he falls it is 181 for 7. It becomes 214 for 8, 248 for 9.
George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes DO NOT talk about getting them in singles. They DO NOT get them in singles. But they do get them. A one-wicket win. Stuff of legends.
That day, PG Wodehouse was at the ground, catching a small break from his mundane clerical duties at the Hongkong Shanghai Bank. He had to leave just as Jessop and Jackson were getting started on their pertnership - his allotted time for the lunchtime sandwich was over and he had to return to the ledgers.
In one version of his past, he claims that he decided to give up his job at the bank then and there.
However many ripples that may cause in the heart of the cricket-romantic, in another version Wodehouse tells us a more plausible tale.
He had dashed out a short story on a numbered page of a ledger and torn the said page off. Subsequently, it had been discovered that an imbecile had torn off a page of the ledger and further investigations suggested that the imbecile was none other than Wodehouse himself. So he had been summarily summoned and dismissed.
All to the good. We got one of the greatest humorists in English language and perhaps the banking crisis was delayed by a few decades.
With his flights of fancy, fluctuating distortions of events and far superior (in my humble opinion) flourish of pen, Wodehouse could have easily upstaged Cardus at his own game. But we are lucky that he decided to dish out his work as honest fiction and not in the guise of cricket reportage.
[Illustration Soumya Ganesh (Maha) from Ashes: This Thing Can Be Done by Arunabha Sengupta and Maha]