The Men Who Raised the Bar by Chris Waters

Author:Chris Waters [Waters, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472977557

Hutton, left, and Maurice Leyland during their second-wicket stand of 382, then England’s highest for any Test wicket.

The cricket followed the same steady lines as day one. Hutton and Leyland played carefully and correctly and had taken that stand to 382 – and the score to 411 – when Leyland was out. Hutton drove O’Reilly into the off side where the diminutive batsman Lindsay Hassett fumbled the ball. But as Leyland tried to steal a second, Hassett recovered to fizz a return to the bowler’s end, where Bradman – having dashed in from mid-on – took the ball and broke the stumps. In what proved to be his last Test innings, Leyland signed off with a career-best 187 from 438 balls with 17 fours.

Hutton then added 135 with captain Hammond, who made 59 before falling lbw to Fleetwood-Smith’s googly – the first of three wickets for nine runs as England slipped from 546 for two to 555 for five. Lancashire’s Eddie Paynter was lbw for a fourth-ball duck, playing back to O’Reilly, and Middlesex right-hander Denis Compton bowled for a single pushing at Waite. As they’d patiently waited their turn to bat, Compton jokingly bet Paynter £1 that they wouldn’t make ten runs between them. The “rot” was stopped by the elegant Nottinghamshire right-hander Joe Hardstaff junior, who helped Hutton lift the score to 634 for five at stumps (Hutton 300, Hardstaff 40).

Hutton had now passed his first-class best of 271 not out for Yorkshire against Derbyshire at Sheffield the previous year. In beating “Tip” Foster’s 287, he’d also achieved the highest score by an Englishman in Ashes cricket. It was only then, said Hutton, that “I began to register that the record was in my grasp”. But he was talking about Bradman’s 334 Ashes record, not Hammond’s world-record 336. As with Bradman’s innings, when all the focus had been on whether he could beat Foster as opposed to Sandham, now all interest centred on Hutton’s pursuit of Bradman’s milestone. Hammond’s score was as incidental as Sandham’s had been, re-emphasising the primacy of Ashes cricket. According to Compton, even Hammond wanted Hutton to raise the bar. Recalling how Hutton looked tired towards the end of his innings, Compton said: “Wally Hammond, Hedley Verity and Bill Bowes pressed him to keep going. In the end they were keener on Len attempting to beat Don’s record than he was.” Hutton’s Yorkshire team-mate Herbert Sutcliffe urged him to go not just for Bradman’s Ashes record, but also for Bradman’s first-class record. Telegramming from Trent Bridge, where he’d scored a century on day one of the Championship game from which Arthur Wood had been forced to withdraw, Sutcliffe wrote: “Hearty congratulations. No one more delighted than I. Go for Bradman’s 452 record. Congratulations also to Maurice.”

After play, Hutton was enticed up to the BBC commentary box. It was the first year that the corporation had televised Test cricket and the earliest days of radio commentary, giving players and their feats greater exposure. Hutton told

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