🦆 The Duck Pond

A quiet week, gentlemen, and no cause for the honours board to trouble itself. Our correspondent has scoured the scorebook from every corner of the ground and must report, with something approaching regret, that not a single member of the eleven presented his wicket for a cipher this week. The timbers stood unmolested, the leather went unrewarded, and the art of not scoring was, for once, left entirely unpractised. One match was played, and in it every batsman troubled the scorer at least once — a state of affairs the Duck Club can only note with wry disappointment, for it is rather the business of this gazette to celebrate failure, and failure has this week declined the invitation. We trust our members will not take this as encouragement. The exclusive zero club stands ready to receive new subscribers the moment application is made, and a place of such dubious distinction is never short of interest for long. Duck Hunting Season Leaderboard 1. S H Hills — 1 innings, 1 duck, 100.0% Mr Hills leads the field this season by the simplest of arithmetic, having faced the scorer's pencil but once and been sent back to the pavilion on that solitary occasion. A perfect record, of a kind, and one his fellow members are cordially invited to challenge at the earliest opportunity. We look ahead with confidence, if not quite optimism, to the next fixture, where the willow may yet fail our men as reliably as it has failed them in seasons past. The Duck Club awaits its next candidates with open arms and a well-thumbed ledger.

A single fixture graced our books this week, and a single wicket fell for nought — but what it lacked in number it makes handsomely up for in ceremony. To the wicket, then. The 1st Eleven Opening the innings against Maidstone Cricket Club, Mr S H Hills strode out first to face the bowling and was, alas, promptly caught by E Buss off the bowling of W Simmonds without so much as troubling the scorer. We are given to understand he did survive at least one delivery before his dismissal, so no golden duck attaches to the affair — a small mercy. What does attach is rather grander: this being the very first innings of Mr Hills's career with the club, he has thus been admitted, on his maiden appearance, to the exclusive zero club — a distinction some men labour a decade to earn and he has secured before luncheon on his first day. The honours board records him already for Duck of the Year 1908, a laurel earned this very week and one he may wear, we trust, with the appropriate mixture of pride and mortification. His name now stands 136th of 386 in the club's long roll of the dismissed, a single nought to his single innings — a purity of record, if nothing else. We note also that a Mr A Barker, who turned out for the club between 1885 and 1904 and was himself Duck of the Year in 1885, sits on the very same career tally of one — Mr Hills may consider himself in respectable, if scoreless, company. The Week in Summary One match, one duck, one debutant received into the fold with unusual promptness. There is something to be said for efficiency, even in failure, and Mr Hills has demonstrated it admirably. The bowling figures of Mr Simmonds and the safe hands of Mr Buss are noted with the courtesy due to gentlemen who did their office well. Duck Hunting Season Leaderboard 1. S H Hills — 1 innings, 1 duck, 100.0 per cent A leaderboard of one is, admittedly, an easy table to top, and Mr Hills has done so in a single stroke of misfortune. We look forward with keen anticipation to the season's next fixture, when the bowling attacks of our opponents will no doubt continue their diligent efforts to add further names to this esteemed and ever-growing register. The eleven are cordially reminded that the timbers wait for no man, and that the art of not scoring remains, as ever, very much alive at Linton Park.

A single fixture was contested this week, and it is my melancholy duty to report that the ducks proved elusive quarry throughout. Not one gentleman of either eleven was dismissed for a cipher — the timbers stood, the willow connected, and the leather was, on this solitary occasion, denied its usual harvest. One may search the honours boards in vain for a fresh entry this week. The exclusive zero club, that place of dubious distinction to which so many of our members have in seasons past been unwillingly admitted, gained no new subscriber on this occasion. Whether this reflects a sudden and uncharacteristic outbreak of application at the crease, or merely the ordinary caprice of the game, this correspondent will not presume to say. Consistency, it seems, took the week off — even consistency of the particular kind for which the Club exists to celebrate. We trust our members will not take this as any diminishment of the art of not scoring, which remains as noble and as democratic a pursuit as ever, open to novice and veteran alike, and merely resting this week rather than retired. Duck Hunting Season Leaderboard The season's returns stand as they were — no fresh figures to report this week, the tally sheet undisturbed by the day's play. Members presently of note in the season's reckoning will find their standing unchanged, and are cordially invited to consider whether such a state of affairs is entirely to their liking. We look with quiet confidence, and no small measure of hope, to the next fixture, at which normal service — by which we mean the entirely abnormal service of being sent back to the pavilion without troubling the scorer — may reasonably be expected to resume. The Club's doors, as ever, remain open to all comers.