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| Sunday, 15 May 2005 |
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Cricket's bashful debutant by A.C.De. Silva Every team has a lean spell and during their lean spell in the early 1920s, Worcestershire sometimes had difficulty in raising a full side. One day in the summer of 1921, Gilbert Ashton, headmaster of Abberley Prep School, received a phone call from the county captain, Maurice Jewell, who asked him to come and play against Essex. When he said this was quite impossible, jewell had an enterprising reply: he told Ashton to find someone else. In due course, a junior member of the staff at the Prep School, A. M. Carr, was hijacked from his teaching duties and told to go and play for the county. Carr protested to his headmaster that he was no good, but Ashton had his orders. Carr played, and finished as top scorer for Worcestershire with 82. All-time smash hits If in search of all-time record breakers, it is time to cast our net wider than the first-class game and delve into feats by school and club batsmen where there are rich pickings to be had. In place of Hanif Mohammad's record-breaking first-class score of 499, there is of course the one of 628 not out scored by A. E. J. Collings, aged 14, in a junior house match at Cliffton College, Bristol. Collins carried his bat through an innings of 836 which lasted 6 hours 50 minutes spread over five afternoons. For most runs in a season we have, instead of Dennis Compton's 3,816, the 1980 aggregate of Brian Row, the former Somerset opener, who collected 4,044 runs for Barnstaple Nondescripts. And for a record opening partnership, the highest to reach the notice is 641. This was scored by N. Rippon and T. Patton (who hit 408) on March 19 in 1914 for Buffalo v Whosonly at Gassed, some 160 miles from Melbourne. As for fast scoring, on April 3 in 1969 Richard Edwards of Auckland showed why batsmen prefer eight-ball overs when he hit 62 runs in an over that included three no-balls. His scoring shots were nine sixes and two fours. In 1932, John Goodman struck a purple patch on his way to making 256 for Australian Club Blackheath vs Lithgrow. In three eight-ball overs he scored 100 not out of 102 runs, including ten sixes and nine fours. Credit for the fastest century may now go to Paul Pittioni, aged 13 who in March 1982, batting for St. Patrick's Marist Brothers High School, Dundas, against Epping YMCA passed the hundred mark in 16 minutes - more than twice the rate of Percy Fender's celebrated 100 in 35 minutes for Surrey vs Northants in 1920. Exhausted batsman Batting for Hendon against Highgate School in 1879, T. A. Fison hit 264 not out in 3 1/2 hours, and ran every one of them. He then left the wicket and the scorebook records his departure as 'retired to catch a train to the continent." |
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