Keeping old scores

Christopher Booker

One of my more enduring cricket memories is of sitting across the Severn from Worcester Cathedral, on a damp April day in 1948, to watch the great Australian team of that year making its first appearance. The little county ground was thronged with such a galaxy of legendary figures from the past that, as a nine-year old boy, 1 was almost speechless with awe — Jack Hobbs, Maurice Tate, Bill Bowes, Frank Woolley, if my memory serves me right, even Wilfred Rhodes and C.B. Fry, who had made his first appearances for Sussex and England back in the 1890's. As

we watched Bradman compile an inevitable century, I had the uncanny feeling that all cricket history was assembled before me.

I have been reminded of that experience by surveying these six majestic volumes which, emerging one by one over the past three years, add up to the most comprehen- sive portrait of cricket over the past 100 years ever published. It is time general tribute was paid to this monumental pro- ject, and nowhere more fitting to do so than in the Spectator, for it was a passing sugges- tion in these columns by Benny Green some years back which first inspired it. One can safely say that Benny Green's vast an- thology, with its three supporting reference books, must henceforth occupy the central place in any serious cricket library not fur- nished with a complete set of Wisden (now so rare that one owner has insured his for £14,000).

Indeed in one sense, Green's anthology (there is one volume to come) is even better than a complete Wisden, for whereas it would be hard to retain any general im- pression from ploughing through 119 suc- cessive annual volumes, the glory of Green's compilation is that, by concen- trating on the highlights, it gives an overall perspective 'on the history of cricket such as has never been available before.

The volume I looked forward to- least was the first, because its period, 1864-1900, seemed so remote. It is true that the early years seem dominated by curiosities, such as a game between one-legged and one- armed men at Islington in 1867 or the rash of games played on the ice during the harsh winter of 1878-9. The highpoint of the season was still Eton v. Harrow at Lords (in 1869, the scenes of social splendour, with `600 carriages of the nobility and gentry' flanking the ground, were such as to pro- voke comparison with Frith's Derby Day).

But it is not long before the spell of these decades begins to work — and three things stand out. The first is the quite astonishing dominance over this period of the great Doctor, W.G. Grace. At the age of 16 he took 7 for 125 for the Gentlemen v. Players at the Oval in 1865. In 1871 he was the first man ever to score 2000 first-class runs in a season, with 2739. In one amazing month in 1876, he not only scored 344, 177 and 318 not out in successive first-class innings, but then went on to a minor game in Hull to score 400 not out. Even at the age of 46, in 1895, he was still capable of scoring 1016 runs in 22 days of May. His towering per- sonality and stamina were such that on one occasion, for Gloucestershire in 1888, he batted seven hours for 215 and went straight on to'bowl 42 overs in Sussex's first innings and 44 in their second — on another he scored a double century after being up all night with a patient.

The second thing which stands out from these pages is how remarkably quickly the outlines of the modern first-class game emerged in the years around 1880, hat round regular test matches with Australia and a recognisable county championship. The third, which I only came to see clearly from this volume, was what an extraor- dinary period for cricket was the 1890's. Scoring was phenomenal. Only four county sides have ever topped 800, three of them in the 1890's, including Lancashire's 801 at Taunton in 1895, when Archie MacLaren's 424 was the highest first-class innings ever played in England. Nine players hit treble-centuries, more than in any decade other than the 1930's. Seven county sides scored record totals which have never been broken. Even Cambridge University, after trailing Sussex by 91 on the first innings in 1890, knocked up 703-9, to win by 425 — and it was only appropriate that in 1899 the Clifton schoolboy A.E.J. Collins should have scored his celebrated 628 not out, the highest individual innings ever (the full score of the game, included here, shows that his side won by 688 runs). But despite the emergence of such giants as Fry and Ranji, Hayward and TrumPer, almost all other individual performances pale against one of the most remarkable stories in the history of cricket, that of R.M. Poore. In a few weeks in the summer of 1899 Major Poore, a huge 6' 4" officer in the Engineers, became one of the most talked about men in England. He had not taken cricket seriously until, while serving in In- dia, he had picked up a text book. He played a little abroad and in 1898 was given a brief trial by Hampshire, scoring two cent/ allies. But 1899 was his annus For two months, between June and August' he almost never stopped hitting hundreds. In one fortnight he not only scored three centuries in successive innings, two against Somerset, but played in the winning teanl to the inter-regimental polo championshiPs and was chosen 'Best Man-at-Arms' in the Royal Military Tournament. A week or two later he scored 304, again. against Somerset, his sixth wicket stand 01 411 with fellow-officer Captain WynYarci still an English record. In the middle Of August Poore was suddenly called off t0 South Africa for the Boer War, and only ever played a handful of innings again. By this time the present list of first class counties was almost complete. Worcester- shire celebrated promotion in 1899 by two of the Foster brothers scoring a centurY 01 each innings against Hampshire (Maier, Poore making 122 for the other side). And cricket was poised to enter in 1900 what Benny Green calls, in the subtitle of his sec- ond volume, its 'Golden Age'. He divides the years 1900-40 into two 'acts'. The first is the pre-war Edwardian summer of Spooner and Tyldesley, Hearne and Blythe. Scoring remains high — when Leicestershire score 609-8 in 1900, Sussex replied with 686 (Fry 135, Ranji 275). In 1902, Fry and Ranji put on 352 in 170 Minutes, out of a total of 705 against Sur- rey. Trumper enjoys his amazing 1902 tour; Hayward in 1906 scores 3516 runs, in- cluding six centuries in successive innings; Young Rhodes graduates from a spin bowler batting last in 1902 to an England opener Putting on a record 323 with Hobbs against Australia ten years later. But through these Pages it is the incredible Jessop who dominates, hitting what are still ten of the 40 fastest centuries ever scored, and four of the ten fastest double centuries. When Gloucestershire put on 201 in only an hour against the West Indians in 1900, Jessop Made 157 of them — although on a May afternoon at Brighton in 1911 even Jessop's feats were eclipsed when an obscure Not- tinghamshire bowler called Ernest Alletson, coming in at no. 9 with his side only 9 ahead Played himself in quietly with 47 in 50 Minutes before lunch, then had a rush of blood to the head and scored another 152 in 40 minutes, the last 89 coming in only a quarter of an hour — an episode no-one has ever equalled.

One of the delights of Benny Green's editing of these year-by-year chronicles (which he has re-arranged county-by- county, as in a normal Wisden) is the sharp eye he has kept open for all the incidental curiosities which make both Wisden and cricket itself so endlessly enthralling. For Instance, the Great War brings a richer than usual crop of Wisden's fascinating obituaries. On the Somme dies an obscure Warwickshire all-rounder Percy Jeeves, whose name won immortality as an inspira- tion to that other keen cricketer P.G. Wodehouse. W.G. Grace earns a vast entry (having played his last first-class game at the age of 60 in 1908). A king of Tonga is remembered because, thanks to the en- thusiasm' he aroused among his subjects for cricket he eventually had to prohibit them from playing more than one day a week or they would have starved to death, 'the plan- tations being entirely neglected for the cricket field'. A naval Sub-Lieutenant Brooke wins mention for having headed the Rugby school averages in 1906 (he had also 'gained considerable reputation as a poet'), Just as Cardinal Manning's death is record- ed in Vol.1 because he had once played for Harrow v. Winchester at Lords in 1825 (though there is nothing to equal the entry for George VI in Vol.3, who as a boy at Windsor, by a cross between a royal flush and a hat-trick once dismissed Edward VII, George V and his brother the future Ed- ward VIII in successive balls). The most consistent delight of these volumes, however, is simply to see set out Tor the first time the complete match-cards of literally hundreds of games long famous because they contained some particular in- cident or record-breaking feat. The period covered by the second half of Vol. 2, 1919-39, was particularly full of them. In the Twenties, for instance, it is fascinating to see at last in full context cricket's most celebrated reversal of fortune, when Hamp-

shire, forced to follow on 208 behind after being dismissed for 15 by Warwickshire, scored 521 in their second innings and won by 155 runs. The story becomes even more remarkable when one realises that Hamp- shire were still actually behind when their sixth wicket fell at 186, and that it was their late-order batsmen who pulled off the miracle. Similarly how many recall that Bradman's 452 not out for New South Wales was made in the second innings, after his side had only led on the first by 8 — they ended up winning by 685 runs! It is fascinating to see the full score of Victoria's greatest innings of all time, 1107, when Ryder with 295 was not even the highest scorer (the remorseless Ponsford made 352). In the Thirties, it is equally fascinating to see the full context of such feats as Verity's 10 for 10; or Kent's 803-4 against Essex, when three batsmen scored 700 between them; or Fagg's two double- centuries in a match; or the 'timeless test' of 1939, when England were set 696 to win by South Africa and had to leave off at 654-5 because, after ten days, the ship was due to take the team home.

Many other wonders float from these inter-war pages — the astonishing all-round feats of Maurice Tate, best known for his superb medium-pace bowling, but who was capable of scoring 203 and helping to put on 385 for Sussex's second wicket against Northants in 1921; of Larwood, who in one game for Notts, against Lancashire took six wickets for one run, then hit 80 in 45 minutes; of Somerset's Arthur Wellard who against Kent in 1938 not only took 13 wickets but hit 94 runs, including 5 sixes in an over off Woolley.

By the late Thirties, as the inter-war ( and even pre-1914) giants stepped down Woolley, Hendren, Hobbs, Sandham — a new generation was emerging to take their place (a favourite quiz question — when Edrich scored 12, Compton 1, and Paynter 0, what did Hutton score? Answer, 364 out of England's 903-7 at the Oval in 1938). Then the hiatus of World War Two in- tervened, Benny Green's 'Golden Age' was at an end — and by the time serious cricket resumed we are into his third volume, covering the years 1940-63.

And here we come to my only real criticism of this stupendous project. In the first two volumes, the choice of material seems well-nigh impeccable. Post-Second War cricket, however, despite the initial ex- cellent decision to include all those wonder- ful 'Victory' games of 1945 (with their astonishing feats by young K.R. Miller) then flounders so badly as to make one hope that, before any future re-publication, there will be some extensive re-editing. Some of the omissions are so glaring as to make one wonder whether pages have simp- ly got lost at the printers — e.g. the 1948 Australians' 774-7 against Gloucestershire (highest total in England since the war); Surrey's 706-4 against Nottingham in 1947 (highest county score since the war); not to mention the three astonishing pages from the 1947 Wisden which I have before me as I write, recording (albeit only in summary form) the two highest stands ever made, Hazare and Gul Mahomed's 577 and Walcott and Worrell's 574 along with Holkar's 912-8 in 1945-6, the highest side- total since the war (no mention either of the two highest-ever match aggregates, Bombay v. Maharashtra's 2376 at Poona in 1948-9, or Bombay v. Holkar's 2078 in 1944-5).

If the 1946 Indian's 533-3 against Sussex is rightly included (only four men batted, all scoring hundreds), why not their next, equally remarkable game when they were dismissed before lunch for 64 by Somerset, who then scored 502 and won by an inn- ings? Why no mention of the amazing game in 1947 when Middlesex scored 637-4 against Leicestershire, were set 66 to win in 25 minutes and Edrich and Compton (who had added 277 in 130 minutes in the first in- nings) knocked off the runs in seven overs with four minutes to spare? Indeed Edrich and Compton's annus inirabilis, altogether one of the most memorable seasons ever, gets generally such short measure that although 25 county games are included from 1946 and 23 for 1948, the total for 1947 is only a miserable five (and even the Champion County v. the Rest of that year, when Middlesex's 'Terrible Twins' finished with such a flourish, Compton's 246 being his highest score of an incredible season, is dated 1948.)

By the time we arrive in the Fifties, the selection settles back to its old form. Coun- ty cricket passes into the doldrums, after its immediate post-war heyday. A good deal of space is rightly given to some of the memorable overseas test series, such as Pakistan v. West Indies in 1957-8 (when Hanif scored 337 in 16 hours, and Sobers his 365) or Australia v. West Indies in 1960-1 (Wisden headlined the famous tie simply 'The Greatest Test Match Ever'). It was right to break off the volume in 1963 with cricket's future generally shrouded in uncertainty, leaving for the final volume (due next year) the amazing changes which have come over the game in the past 20 years. It is hard to be gloomy about the state of a game which can still produce, say, a Zaheer, let alone the improbable.Botham who only a week or two back at Taunton almost equalled Alletson by hitting 83 runs of his 131 against Warwickshire in only 22 minutes.

I have no space to say more of the three Wisden reference books, other than they are all superb. Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Frank Warwick's County Cricket (with career averages of every county player) is infinitely more comprehensive than anything on the subject before. Bill Frin- dall's Test Cricket simply records the full score of every test match up to 1977-8 (55 per cent of all test matches have been since 1953) and if I have any complaint at all against his quite unrivalled book of records, it is only that his Bradman-like efficiency might leave just the tiniest scope for more imagination in choice of categories — e.g. why not an entry for the highest totals made without any batsman scoring a century?