Famous Cricketers No 1 - Jack Hobbs

Australia in 1911-12, because after H.V.Hordern had taken 12 wickets in the First Test, which was lost, Hobbs put them to the sword with centuries in the next three. At Melbourne he and WRhodes set a record of 323 for the first wicket, made in four and a half hours. In South Africa in 1913-14, he made 1,489 runs, 700 more than anyone else, and in the following summer, when Surrey were champions for the only time in his career, he made 11 centuries, three of them over 200. At Bradford he hit a century and a fifty in the same match, and at Lord’s he and Hayward shared the last of their 40 century partnerships. This was his high noon, when he was unchallenged as the leading batsman in the world, the supreme technician on any sort of wicket. Although audacity was sometimes tempered by his increasing responsibility to the side, the characteristic style was a fluent aggression which dictated to the bowlers. The worse the conditions, the more he set himself to dominate through attack. But the ripeness is all. By 1914 Hobbs had scored 25,587 runs, made 65 centuries, played in 28 Tests. The war years should have been his prime, and at 36 he could not be certain of recovering his old ascendancy. But in the event all these figures were to be more than doubled, and he was to garner the richest harvest the game has known. When he retired in 1934 he had made 61,760 runs, at an average of 50.70, and 199 centuries, 100 of them after his 40th birthday. In the early part of the 1914-18 War, Hobbs worked in a munitions factory. He then served for over two years in the Royal Air Force from 1916. After the war, in 1919, Hobbs showed much of the old aggression: 205 not out against the Australian Imperial Forces when the next score was 38; with J N Crawford 96 in 32 minutes, scored in bad light and drizzle, to defeat Kent in his postponed benefit match; with Sandham in 1920, 190 in 90 minutes against Northamptonshire; a century in 65 minutes on a fiery pitch at Leicester. But in 1921 a muscle injury was followed by an ulcerated appendix which nearly cost his life. He played only six innings in that year of plenty and thereafter he tired more easily and his batting was less adventurous. Adapting his style to the physical possibilities, he now dominated the bowlers off the back foot. The runs rolled in, but their gathering was never mechanical. A Hobbs innings was punctuated with his personal signatures as, all technical problems now instinctively resolved, he deployed the fullness of his art. At Bath in 1923 he made his hundredth century, and at Taunton two years later he both equalled and overtook the record of 126 centuries set up by W G Grace. In this season of 1925 he scored ten of his 16 centuries in the first 12 games, and he led the English averages with 3,024 runs at 70.32. Next year his 316 not out for Surrey was the highest innings ever played at Lord’s, and in the final Test at The Oval, where he opened with Sutcliffe, a masterly century on a turning wicket helped to recover the Ashes from Australia. In 1928 he had an average of 82, and he went to Australia in the winter; a teammate said that for him the tour was like a royal procession as he visited for the last time the grounds where he had given so much pleasure. At Melbourne his 49, made when the pitch was most lethal, enabled England to get 332 to win the match in conditions so bad they were not expected to reach a 100. Gradually, however, the years took their toll and he had to rest while minor strains and injuries took longer to clear up. His final century in first-class cricket was scored in Duckworth’s benefit match at Old Trafford in 1934, and the crowd sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’. All but two of Hobbs’s 61 Tests were played against Australia and South Africa: in 102 innings he made 5,410 runs at 56.94, with 15 centuries. In his career he shared in 166 century opening partnerships, an average of one every eight innings, the highest being 428, and a total of 302 century partnerships for all wickets, an average of one in 4.5 innings. Hobbs six times made two centuries in one match; he reached 1,000 runs in a season 26 times; he scored centuries both home and away against every county. In the Gentlemen v Players fixture he had his own little cluster of records: an aggregate of 4,050, the highest individual score of 266 not out, and centuries at Lord’s, The Oval and Scarborough. In all grades of cricket he made 244 centuries, the last in 1941. 7