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Managing Editor Huw Turbervill has kindly given permission to print extracts from the Bagchi article.
In 1938 at the tender age of 22 years, Sir Len Hutton made the then record Test score of 364 runs against Australia at The Oval. One of the accounts of the marathon innings (over 13 hours at the crease) comes from journalist Rob Bagchi written in The Cricketer (August 2018).
Background
• This was the fifth Test of the series; previously there had been two draws, an abandonment and an Australian win at Headingley
• It was a timeless Test match, played on plumb wicket and it commenced on Friday 19 August 1938.
• Batting first, England scored 903 for 7 (from 336 overs) and bowled out Australia twice to win by an innings and 579 runs
Now Rob Bagchi picks up the story of the Hutton innings:
“It is true that the pitch favoured the team batting first, and so did Don Bradman’s wager on winning the toss by selecting just three frontline bowlers. Injury deprived him of his only genuine quick hence he relied on his wrist-spinning strikeforce of the master, Bill O’Reilly and the more capricious Chuck Fleetwood-Smith.
Once he had called incorrectly, Australia’s captain must have feared the worst, but even the most abject pessimist could not have conceived what was to follow. It was a gloomy August morning and the ground was a shade over half- full on the first day of the football season. Hutton, back in the team after breaking his finger, opened with Bill Edrich, who was trapped leg-before by O’Reilly playing across the line for 12. Enter Maurice Leyland, in his first Test for 18 months. There was no time limit on the game and the pitch had been prepared accordingly. Audacious batting and entertaining the crowd brought no extra dividend so Hutton and Leyland grimly set about their business.
When Hutton had made 40, Fleetwood-Smith’s flight lured him down the pitch, but the ball skidded past his edge and he was stranded a year out of his ground. Had the wicketkeeper, Ben Barnett, not fumbled his take and missed the stumping on 40, Hammond’s unbeaten 336 from Auckland in 1933 would have survived as the best Test score.
After tea on the Saturday, when Hutton had made 140, he skipped down the track again and lofted O’Reilly over mid-on for four. Immediately Hammond walked on to the balcony and told him, using the universal language of mime, to rein it in (Sunday was the rest day).
A much bigger crowd, not put off by heavy skies nor the newspapers’ palpable distaste, gathered on Monday morning to watch Hutton and Leyland turn the screw.
Leyland batted on for 100 minutes before falling for 187, Hammond attacked briefly then played himself in after lunch when the new ball was taken and although he never explicitly told Hutton to carry on playing cautiously, the admonition from Saturday night was unambiguous and there was no discussion of raising the tempo. In the final session, before bad light stopped play, Hutton first passed Tip Foster’s 287 from 1903, the previous England best in an Ashes Test, and then brought up his triple-century.
There were almost three hours more to go on the Tuesday, and first he gingerly passed the 334 Bradman made in 1930 at Headingley by cutting Fleetwood-Smith for four, and then surpassed Hammond’s record. “Thank God that’s over,” Hutton reported the umpire ‘Fanny’ Walden saying, and admitted he felt like adding “Amen to that”. Someone had brought a cornet into the ground and played ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ and the crowd sang along. Every Australian shook his hand.
He was finally out at 2.30pm, caught at cover, and was met at the top of the steps by Leyland, who led him through the Long Room to the bar and ordered two bottles of champagne, “one for me and one for thee”. He doesn’t record whether he drank all or any of it, because he was back on the field a couple of hours later where, with Jack Fingleton and Bradman unable to bat, England bowled Australia out twice in 86 overs to complete the annihilation”.