Famous Cricketers No 60 - Ernest Tyldesley

anyone realised since he then proceeded to hit centuries in each of his next three visits to the crease and thus missed repeating his four in four innings of 1926 by just 19 runs. It was at Cardiff that he produced a superb display of off-driving and cutting, batting for 375 minutes and hitting 27 fours in his 239. He and Len Hopwood put on 273 in four hours for the second wicket and he left after scoring 109 out of the 161 he added with Iddon for the third wicket. It was a memorable performance. Back at Old Trafford he faced the Australians and had reached 107 before he was stumped by Ben Barnett. And so to Bristol, where he concluded this sequence by taking 134 off Gloucestershire; along the way he shared in the sixth and last 300 partnership of his career, another county record. Though Len Hopwood took the scoring honours with 220, Tyldesley dominated the stand of 316 for the second wicket as Lancashire cruised to 454 for 5 declared and ultimately an innings victory. Unfortunately he had needed 135 - just one run more - to be the first player to the 1,000 runs for the season. Though he had to wait another three days he still reached the target ahead of the field when he scored his first run against Worcestershire on June 9th; it was quite some achievement for a man in his mid-forties. Tyldesley’s last great concentrated burst of scoring is worth looking at in some detail: over the seventeen days from May 23rd to June 8th he scored 755 runs at an average of 125.83 despite his single figure dismissal by Surrey. Impressive stuff indeed. The remainder of June was by no means as productive, although his 109 (with 15 fours) at Trent Bridge off an attack which included Larwood and Voce at their peak helped to pull the game round and secure an unlikely victory. (See the footnote to E.W.Swanton’s tribute at the start of the book.) He was assisted in this effort by the dashing Lionel Lister, their 182 fifth wicket partnership coming in just two hours. A further milestone was reached while he was playing out time in the drawn match against Sussex on July 3rd. In passing 30 he overtook his brother John’s record aggregate runs for Lancashire, at the time held to be 32,267. (The subsequent downward revision of this figure to 31,949 means, in retrospect, that Ernest actually overtook John when he reached 38 on the way to his 134 at Bristol.) It was four days after this that he completed his hundredth hundred. Wisden said that “Drives, cuts and leg-side strokes brought him 13 fours in an innings noteworthy to a large degree for its sound defence. Still he scored very quickly at times and his partnership with Paynter realised 227 runs in three and a half hours.” It was still only July 7th and he had already hit seven centuries. That his 122 contributed to another innings win for Lancashire (over Northamptonshire) seems almost incidental. His 79 out of 193 against Middlesex was insufficient to save his side from a rare defeat but he finished July in fine style, scoring 244 runs in total in the wins over Gloucestershire and Leicestershire while only being dismissed once. His 116 in the latter match at Aigburth contributed to another lightning stand with Lionel Lister of 124 in 90 minutes. And still he was not finished; with Lancashire in trouble at 68 for 4 in their second innings against Derbyshire, E.T. scored a brilliant 87 not out to guide them through to 202 for 5 declared and eventual victory; even more exciting was his contribution to the run chase to beat Middlesex in the next game; driving and pulling splendidly he steered his side from 45 for 4 to 168 for 4 in an hour and a half in company with Hopwood. The win was secured with five minutes to spare, Tyldesley unluckily finishing four short of a well deserved hundred. The finish was equally good; each of the last three games of the season featured an innings of over 80 from the veteran. Opening with 84 out of 196 all out against Sussex, it was his second innings which brought up yet another milestone; when he reached 39 he passed Johnny Tyldesley’s overall career aggregate of 37,897 to make him the highest scoring Lancashire batsman of all time. With Lancashire only needing to draw their closing Championship game with Surrey to clinch the title, Hopwood’s 151 and Tyldesley’s 81 were major contributions to a total of 453 for 8 declared which just about wrapped it up. So a couple of weeks later they were back at The Oval for the match against the Rest and although Lancashire suffered an eight wicket defeat it could have been much heavier but for Ernest’s 82 in the second innings. It was a fitting finale to a glorious Indian summer. 62