Pigeon with promise

A summer’s afternoon on the stubbles offers testing sport and the chance of hitting a magical milestone

- SIMON GARNHAM

The tally counter doesn’t lie: 49 birds shot by 2.30pm. Hours of daylight ahead of us. Birds coming in strongly.

Both shooting well. Surely we’re on for a ton, I thought, as George folded another pigeon over the decoys to get us to 50. The half-century was up. Just do the same again.

One hundred is something of a magic number. Her Majesty doesn’t send telegrams to 94-year-olds. MCC members don’t stand and applaud the batsman who is on 97. Pope Gregory XIII didn’t put together his calendar in the hope of clustering years together into batches of 99. It has to be 100.

I have a confession to make: I’ve never made one. Not in my cricketing days, when I could both run and bend at the same time, nor over decoys. The Don (Sir Donald Bradman) and I both have something in common. He averaged 99.94 at the end of his test career. I too have not made it to a century. Obviously there the similarity ends; he was a titan of the game and greatly blessed with skill.

But this summer, all that seemed to be changing. I’ve had a series of good outings over standing wheat and laid barley. I’m hitting clays and recording some decent scores. My first outing in August might just be the one, I thought.

Blistering