Famous Cricketers No 65 - Len Hutton

Bowling O M R W BB Ave 5i 10m Test matches 3 0 28 0 - - - - Other matches 15 1 88 2 1-8 44.00 - - Tour (8-ball) 18 1 116 2 1-8 58.00 - - Career (6-ball) 940.5 184 } 3969 145 6-76 27.37 4 1 (8-ball) 262.7 40 1947 This season will always be remembered for its wonderful weather and for the stirring deeds of “The Middlesex Twins,” Denis Compton and Bill Edrich. Each one’s total of runs for the season surpassed the previous record held by Tom Hayward from as long ago as 1906. The touring South Africans came in for particularly heavy punishment with over 2,000 runs coming from their bowling alone. With the great reduction in county cricket one may safely say that their record will never be surpassed. By any normal standards Len Hutton had a wonderful season with 2,654 runs at an average of 64.62, including 11 centuries and the highest score of the summer. Even E.W.Swanton, Compton’s greatest admirer, is reported as having said that had Hutton been given a stronger constitution he would have scored over 4,000 runs (as against Compton’s 3,816), an opinion with which the always modest Compton did not disagree. Hutton’s season fell into three parts with a superb opening, an even more wonderful conclusion, but a disappointing spell in between when in nine matches, including three Tests, he scored only 312 runs in sixteen innings. At the beginning of the season he scored four centuries in consecutive matches and narrowly missed a century in each innings in the next game at Old Trafford with Lancashire. A century in either innings here would have given him his 50th in first-class cricket, but he had to wait another ten games before achieving this landmark at Bramall Lane against the South Africans. He followed this with a further century against them in the Headingley Test, his first on home soil, and from that point never looked back. Finishing the season in a blaze of glory, he scored a century in each innings against Essex, 270* v Hampshire, (“Hutton batted superbly … beautifully timed drives brought him the majority of his 34 boundaries”), two other centuries and two fifties. In the “Roses” match at Old Trafford he helped to make history with Willie Watson as for the first time in these matches Yorkshire had a century opening partnership in each innings. In the Headingley Test, where the gates were locked, he took part in an opening partnership with Washbrook of 141 and Wisden remarked that “his magnificent bad-wicket batsmanship played a leading part in England’s success.” He finished the season strongly in the Scarborough Festival with a brilliant 107 for his county against the MCC – “two hours and ten minutes of brilliant play” – and an impressive display of captaincy for the Players against the Gentlemen where he showed many signs of that shrewdness and tactical knowledge which were the hallmarks of his later England captaincy. Len was now ready for a good winter’s rest to prepare himself for the visit of the Australians in 1948 for what promised to be a hard-fought series. Own Team O M R W Opp Ct Total Total 225. Yorkshire v MCC, Lord’s, May 3, 5, 6 (MCC won by 163 runs) c J.A.Young b J.W.Martin 0 81 134 c B.H.Valentine b J.A.Young 15 233 343-9d 226. Yorkshire v Oxford University, The Parks, May 7, 8 (Yorkshire won by an innings and 134 runs) b M.A.Sutton 103 380-6d 2 1 6 1 J.S.Rumbold lbw 124 32