HAPPY NONSENSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 885, 20 July 1956, Page 14

HAPPY NONSENSE

CENTURY OF A _ LIFETIME, by R. T. Johnston; Macmillan, English price 7/6. ‘TEST cricket is overwritten, I think. Too many playfully modest stars; too many scandal-and-sensation mongers; too many chilly statisticians-(‘"This broke the 17-year-old record for a sixthwicket, second-innings stand at Lords on a hot Wednesday"); too many of the august critics who see Bradman as Beethoven, Hutton as Helpmann, and ‘so on. Village cricket, on the other

hand, usually gets the J. M. Barrie treatment-there must be rooks and elms, irregular wickets, whimsical vicars and heroic blacksmiths. There must be a pub-on the boundary and quaint Gothick names. Century of a Lifetime consists of five short stories; four on village cricket, one on a thrilling Test at Lords. The elms, the rooks, the vicar, all are there. The pub is called "The Long Stop." Old Job Varnish succeeds by dubious means in achieving the hundredth run of his lifetime; a female test-player rescues the match for St. Bardolph’s; Alfred Lockjaw and Samuel Gizzard, the inseparable bachelors, fall out over a lady but are reunited as they open against S3dgewarble. The narrator is Oberon Stringweed, who has a_ genially unscrupulous indifference to M.C.C. ethics of scoring and umpiring. R. T. Johnson does all this very well. He is that eerie compound, a Scot with a sense of humour and a boundless love of pure cricket. His illustrations are Lodgelike and, like so many Scots, he can tell a simple story with beguiling skill. At St. Bardolph’s it is always afternoon, late afternoon. As the shadows of the elm trees lengthen, our side is in a desperate plight, but have no fear. The winning six will be lifted clear over the roof of "The Long Stop," and under that roof tonight you shall hear how and why. Nonsense, happy nonsense.

G. C. A.

Wall