Doctor Who: Black Orchid Read Online Free

smile of approval. He exchanged hopeful glances with the players near him.
    ‘What’s the object?’ asked Nyssa.
    ‘What object?’
    ‘The object of the game?’
    ‘Oh. The side which gets the most runs wins.’
    ‘What’s a run?’ mumbled Adric through a mouthful of sticky chicken.
    ‘When the two players run the length of the pitch.’
    There was an expectant silence as the bowler commenced his run up to the wicket. He bowled the ball short outside the off stump and the Doctor cut it past point to the boundary. There was enthusiastic applause as the umpire signalled four runs.
    ‘Good shot!’ exclaimed Tegan.
    ‘What are they clapping for?’ mumbled Adric through lips flecked with pastry.
    ‘Four runs,’ said Tegan.
     
    ‘But they didn’t run,’ complained Nyssa.
    ‘They don’t have to,’ explained Tegan, ‘if the ball reaches the boundary.’
    ‘What’s the boundary?’
    ‘Where the people are.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘If the ball’s hit over the people’s heads that’s six runs,’
    went on Tegan.
    ‘What if it hits the people?’ slobbered Adric.
    ‘Nothing. And it doesn’t. And do stop scoffing like that!’ she added irritably. ‘You’re making an exhibition of yourself.’
    The Doctor glanced the next ball delicately down the leg side and the batsmen crossed for one run.
    ‘Oh, good!’ enthused Tegan.
    ‘Good?’ said Nyssa curiously.
    ‘Great!’ revised Tegan.
    ‘But they only ran once.’
    ‘Yes, but the Doctor’s got the bowling.’
    ‘Got the what?’
    ‘It was the last ball.’
    ‘What? Already?’
    ‘Not of the game; of the over.’
    ‘What’s an over?’
    Tegan’s eyes glazed over. She had suddenly become too interested in the game to try to explain its intricacies to the uninitiated. ‘You watch a bit of it,’ she suggested. ‘You’ll soon pick it up.’
    The Doctor, nicely off the mark and with five runs to his credit, took guard against the spin bowler at the other end. The first delivery was pitched well up to the Doctor who went deftly out to meet the ball in a half volley and drove it high over the sight screen to a concerted murmur of delight and enthusiastic applause.
    ‘There! That’s a six,’ explained Tegan, joyfully putting her hands together. But Nyssa was feeling excluded by this rather silly game and Adric was content to pursue his gastronomic adventures unhindered by the need to acquire knowledge that held no interest for him.
    The spin bowler, out of countenance that a tail-end batsman should treat him with such disrespect, decided to tempt the Doctor away from the crease with a short googly.
    But the Doctor wasn’t deceived by the cunningly concealed action. He saw how the ball left the bowler’s hand and knew that when it pitched on the wicket it would turn unexpectedly the other way. Again, with impeccable footwork, he moved with the spin and pulled the ball to the mid-wicket boundary. The Doctor had faced five balls from which he’d scored fifteen runs.
    Such was Lord Cranleigh’s delight at the prowess of the latecomer he promptly forgot all about his other guests. He moved, in a near trance, to a beautiful woman seated in front of the pavilion whose fine-boned face, shielded by a wide confection of a hat, belied her fifty-five years. The dowager Marchioness of Cranleigh smiled at her son.
    ‘Your substitute is shaping very well, Charles.’
    ‘Isn’t he, by Jove!’
    The Marquess crouched on his haunches by his mother’s deck chair, his eyes alight with admiration. ‘If only he could have got here earlier.’
    The Doctor watched the bowler direct a fielder to come in closer to the bat, to the silly mid-on position, and smiled. He played the next ball with circumspection; bat together with the pad, and acutely angled to smother the spin and keep the ball well out of the prehensile grasp of the man in the silly position. The fourth ball was a quicker one and short on the leg stump. The Doctor hooked it for six to prolonged applause.