Millie Week 43, Mon 1 - Sat 6 July 1991

I'd very rarely have to bat when I was playing cricket at school. I was definitely a 'tail-end Charlie', and a very reluctant batter. My aim would be to get myself out as quickly as possible without causing injury to myself or anyone else.

I was parodying all those Empire-era school stories I used to read when I was a child. You know the ones - Blenkinsop Minor, the brilliant but penniless scholarship boy in the first form, doing his best to fit in with the others at Bluefriars school in his hand-me-down uniform but never quite succeeding until the day he finds himself at bat, facing the son of Lord Squittington at the very end of a hard and bitterly fought house cricket match between Slytherin and Griffindor. Or something like that. He needs one run to draw, two to win. The ball is hurled at him, he flexes his arms, the bat describes a graceful arc through the languid summer air and connects with the ball with a heathy thwack. The ball is found the following day, somewhere in the next county, and Blenkinsop Minor is a hero, finally accepted as a good egg by the entire school, apart from the bitter and scheming heir to the Squittington millions... Etc.

This is very much my take on that sort of situation. It may not be cricket, but then what is?

For those that don't know the rules of cricket, I'd better explain what Millie does in the fifth strip. She effectively commits cricket suicide by knocking the bales off the wicket. Normally that should be done by the other team, but it's perfectly possible to make yourself out by accidentally knocking your own bales off. I know I've done it before, simply by not looking where my bat was going when preparing to wallop a ball hurled in my direction.