Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

bowling by Foster and Hands helped Warwicks to a good lead and then abject Gloucestershire batting meant only 26 was required for a ten-wicket win. A promising start, but not even Foster, optimism renewed, would expect championship aspirants Surrey to roll over as weakly at The Oval. Little went right. He beat Hayward to the toss and a lunch score of 113 for one seemed promising. The light then deteriorated, an intermittent and depressing drizzle set in, Hitch achieved his only hat-trick and Warwicks collapsed to 226 all out. Matters now went from bad to worse. The weather improved and on the second morning Hobbs moved from 34 to 183 – his 149 runs is the most scored in any pre-lunch session against Warwicks. He hit Foster for 20 in an over, and after the skipper had his revenge, Fender took it out on the demoralised bowlers, racing to 140 in two hours and adding 121 in 45 minutes with W.J.Abel, who himself scored 87 in an hour. Surrey totalled 541, Foster conceding 149 runs in 29 overs for two wickets. On the final day Kinneir and Parsons added 58 for the first wicket after which only Foster, 25 before trying to hoist Abel high to leg showed any fight. The last nine wickets fell for 60, the visitors lost by an innings and 197. A terrible defeat and Foster needed something spectacular in the next game, Worcestershire at Dudley, to restore supporters’ faith. He didn’t let them down. Worcestershire won the toss but, though Foster and Jeeves both remained wicketless, a colourless display saw the ‘Pear’ county subside to 188 in 74.3 overs, leaving Warwicks time to reach 122 for two in 100 minutes by the close. Parsons and Quaife added 116 in 90 minutes before Parsons fell for 102. Quaife was now joined by Foster at 197 for three, and the skipper played with an aggressive assurance none of the bowlers could combat. He reached 50 in 60 minutes, 100 in 105 minutes, 150 in 155 minutes, 200 in 185 minutes. He fairly raced to 250 in 200 minutes – thus adding 50 in 15 minutes – and finally attained the first triple-century by a Warwicks batsman in four hours and ten minutes. When he declared on 305 he had batted 257 minutes. He hit 44 fours and one five but, perhaps surprisingly, no sixes. According to scorer George Austin however, Foster had told him at lunch that he would hit one ‘down that bloody chimney’ and gestured to Palethorpe’s pie and sausage factory at Dudley Port, an impossible hit. Austin claimed Foster did hit a six after lunch but it was not recorded in the scorebook. This was the first instance of a batsman in the Championship scoring 300 or more in a day, and remained a record until 1930, when Duleepsinhji scored 333 in a day for Sussex. Foster remains the only non-specialist batsman to achieve the feat. 51 Vicissitudes down to war 83 51 Other statistical highlights include the following points. His 305 not out remains the highest score by a No.5 in any Warwicks match. His 300 was reached in 250 minutes, the quickest by time in any Warwicks match: his closest challengers are I.V.A.Richards, in 276 minutes for Somerset in 1985 and B.C.Lara in 280 minutes against Durham in 1994. His 305 not out was the highest Warwicks score until beaten by Lara’s 501* in 1994 and the highest away score until M.A.Wagh scored 315 v Middlesex at Lord’s in 2001. At the time Foster’s total was the tenth-highest score in English first-class cricket and the seventh-best in the County Championship. It remains the highest score for Warwicks against Worcestershire.