Hundreds of hundreds
-Benny Green _
Last Thursday afternoon, at twenty minutes to five on the Maidstone county ground, a friendlylooking man only very slightly impeded by the cummerbund of advancing corpulence, leaned forward in his crease, pushed a ball to the off-side and trundled leisurely down the pitch, thus completing what may well turn out to have been the century in English cricket history more fraught with significance than any other.
For the portly gentleman was Colin Cowdrey of Kent, and the century his hundredth. Now that first-class cricket has squeezed itself into the straitjacket of the one-day beer match whose statistics are so meaningless that they do not qualify for inclusion in a player's career summary, the likelihood of any other batsman ever scoring a century of centuries must be extremely remote. Of contemporary batsmen currently appearing in English county • cricket (no other country has a season long enough to make the feat feasible), the only ones with even the faintest chance of emulating Cowdrey are John Edrich with 83 and Garfield Sobers with 79. Geoffrey Boycott would not thank me for omitting him from the list of possibles, but at the start of the 1973 season he had scored only 68 first-class centuries, and his chances may well be frustrated.
Fifteen men achieved the feat before Cowdrey, and a study of the facts behind the facts reveals a truth or two both about the game and the men who play it. Cowdrey, whose career began slowing almost to a dead-stop about three seasons ago, has caused his admirers considerable palpitations as he approached the magic figure. It is as long ago as 1968 since he edged his timorous way into the nineties, and the complete process has taken himtwenty-one English seasons and nine overseas tours. There is no question that his temperamental diffidence has delayed the event by several years, but what is more interesting is that having achieved his hundreth hundred at the age of 40, Cowdrey should be considered to have left it a bit late. One of the most regrettable developments of the modern era is the increasing haste with which professional cricketers retire from the game.
For instance, Jack Hobbs, like Cowdrey, scored his hundredth hundred just after his fortieth birthday, against Somerset at Bath in May 1923. But Hobbs then sttled down for a second century of centuries and very nearly achieved it, reaching the unbeaten figure of 197 before finally retiring in his early 50s. As for W. G. Grace, the first man ever to score a hundred hundreds, he was 46 years old before he completed
the performance, and it is an interesting indication of changing attitudes inside cricket that whereas. when Hobbs enade his 116 not out at Bath, the Editor of Wisden's Almanack never even mentioned the affair, Grace's great day, oddly enough also at the expense of Somerset, was marked by national rejoicing. On that afternoon, Grace had taken his score past two hundred when a tray of champagne was carried on to the pitch, since which moment the historians have been squabbling over whether the Doctor celebrated with a magnum or a jereboam.
Probably the quickest compilation of a hundred hundreds was achieved by Walter Hammond, who passed the mark in 1935, also without earning a mention in Wisden's editorial, and oddly enough, also with 116 against Somerset. Certainly the mOst remarkable performance of the feat was by Bradman, who did it even though hopelessly handicapped by the brevity of the Australian season, and whose final total (117), included a higher proportion in foreign countries (41) than any other centurion. In another sense the most remarkable name among the sixteen is that of Leslie Ames of Kent, who was primarily a wicketkeeper.
But it is when we examine the list of great batsmen who never made a hundred hundreds that we see that statistics after all are no more than the arithmetic of politics. Cricketers fail to make a hundred hundreds for a variety of reasons. Either they retire too soon, like Peter May (85) or Ted Dexter (51), or their career is shattered by illness or affairs of state, like Ranjitsinhji (72) and his tragic nephew Duleepsinhji (50); or their patrician hauteur precludes them from any such vulgar inter est in': the decidedly vulgar fractions of their own performances, like C. B. Fry (94) and A. C. Maclaren (47). It is patently absurd to deduce from the lists that Keith Miller (41) was only one third as good as Tom Graveney (122), and there is not much doubt that Compton's 123 were a great deal better to watch than Tyldesley's 102.
What is oddest of all is that two of the greatest batsmen of all time failed to do what Cowdrey did the other day, and failed for no discernible reason. Ernie Tyldesley's big brother Johnny, one of the most accomplished players in hsitory, scored 86 hundreds, while Gilbert Jessop, arguably the most phenomenal batting genius ever seen, only stopped at the crease long enough to make 53 hundreds. Those who praise modern batsmen might care to ponder the thought that never once in his entire career did Jessop stay at the crease for more than three hours. Cowdrey, whose father christened him Michael Colin, that his initials might be M.C.C. could well follow the example of Grace and Hobbs and continue compiling big scores for several more seasons. Then again, being a modern, he probably won't.
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