As he awaits the ball, he is in an attitude, both angular and flat; he is “cut in two”, so to say, by a bend in the body that gives us a lively suggestion of a right-angle come to life.
Even as the ball passes through the air towards him, Hill-Wood’s body remains cramped and unlovely, his bat making a spasmodic up-and-down movement.
Then if at the last second, the ball turns out right for hitting, Hill-Wood suffers a sudden transformation-quick as thought his body throws off it’s cramping angles, and becomes erect while the bat accomplishes the stroke.
It all happens as though, suddenly, Hill-Wood had broken free from chains; the transformation, indeed, might well suggest a livelier metaphor-that the batsmen emerges at the critical moment in his own useful and confident image after casting away a magic cap or Tarnhelm that has been disguising his true shape in the shape of crabbed age.”[2] He played two matches for Derbyshire in the 1924 season and five for them in the 1925 season in which years he also played for the Eton Ramblers.
[5] He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1946 for his work as Director, Western Area, Postal and Telegraph Censorship Department.