Latest News & Items

A new sport for the New Year: Bumble puppy!

11th January 2024

More…

Perfect Putting at the Ryder Cup?

28th September 2023

More…

Sportspages on Holidayish

1st August 2023

Do feel free to order during the next two weeks. We are on a bit of a holiday ‘go-slow’ but orders will be fufilled and sent out…just a little more slowly! More…

England in the 2023 Women’s Football World Cup

20th July 2023

It’s that time again, when we can hope and dare to dream: that England CAN win the 2023 World Cup in New Zealand and Australia. They have a good chance. It’s a great time for women’s football…and it’s a good time to look back at its history. As we all know, women’s football grew massively […] More…

Calling time on Just Fontaine – a French football legend, RIP

16th March 2023

We love discovering sports memorabilia with great stories. Recently we acquired one of Just Fontaine’s commemorative watches, which fills exactly that brief. The wristwatch is inscribed to dial “Just Fontaine. World Record 13 goals 1958-1998”. Fontaine, French football legend, presented one of these watches to each of the twenty two members of the French 1958 […] More…

Sporting Legends we have lost

19th January 2023

When we sent out our first New Stock Catalogue of the year, we realised it had been a while – too long! – since our last one in September. We reflected on the sporting legends we had lost just since September – way too many. We thought we’d like to make at least brief mention […] More…

Argentina wins the 2022 World Cup for the third time

22nd December 2022

More…

Uruguay World Cup Football 1930

10th November 2022

More…

King Charles III and Cricket

15th September 2022

We have been contemplating the huge job in front of King Charles III. We reminded ourselves what an able man he has shown himself to be over the years. Us being us, we looked to sport for the clues. We all know what a great polo player and general equestrian he was. We’ve seen him […] More…

England’s Lionesses in the Women’s Euros 2022: How far women’s football has come!

21st July 2022

How proud would these pioneers of women’s football from 1918 be to see England’s Lionesses perform in the Women’s Euros 2022?! When this Scottish women’s team played in 2018, they would have rightly believed they had already come far. Despite attempts to set up and build up women’s football in the nineteenth century, it was […] More…

Archives

Search

Cricket Records: Len Hutton’s 364 in 1938

31st August 2016

Cricket records were smashed yesterday at Trent Bridge. England’s 444-3  against Pakistan.was the highest ever ODI team total. Alex Hales achieved his record-breaking ODI score of 171 at his home ground. Joss Buttler hit England’s fastest ODI 50 (off 22 balls). Although the game seemed to go all England’s way, Pakistan’s Mohammad Amir broke an impressive record too. He scored 58. As Pakistan’s no 11, his score was the highest for a no.11 in ODI history too.

England’s success yesterday reminded us of an earlier batting triumph, which also made cricket history.

The 5th Ashes game in 1938 took place at the Oval from 20-24 August. England needed to win the test match to draw the series – one match had already been abandoned. Len Hutton opened…and continued batting for 13 hours 20 minutes during 8 batting sessions. His score of 364 broke test match cricket records. In particular he surpassed the batting record of  Australia’s then captain and cricketing legend, Don Bradman. Bradman had scored 334 at Leeds in the 1930 Ashes.

Len Hutton's 364 in the 1938 Ashes, cricket, scorecard, batting, cricket records
Len Hutton’s 364 in the 1938 Ashes

Hutton’s record-breaking score took England to an unassailable win of 903-7. He mused on the experience in later years. He remembered how he had started to relax on the Monday afternoon, having batted for 8 hours or more. He lifted a ball over mid-on’s head. England’s captain, Wally Hammond immediately popped up on the pavilion balcony. He made it very clear that Hutton was to keep his head and his shots down. Hutton dutifully pressed on. By Monday evening Hutton had become understandably tired from his long stint at the crease. Leyland advised him to have a port and a pint of guinness to help him sleep. The teetotaller Hutton did as suggested. He later reckoned he would have needed 5 or 6 pints to knock him out that night.  He was haunted by the face of fiercesome, Australian bowler, Bill O’ Reilly, who he knew he’d have to face the next day. O’Reilly was an aggressive bowler, who ran in as if he’d like to eat batsmen for breakfast.

O’Reilly did indeed bowl Hutton on the Tuesday…but not before Hutton had destroyed all previous cricket records by scoring 364.  In the meantime no.s 5 & 6, Eddie Paynter and Denis Compton had spent nearly two days padded up in the pavilion, waiting to go on. Eddie Paynter bet Compton £1.00 that they wouldn’t score more than 10 between them.  Paynter was out for a duck. Compton was bowled for 1. The fall of that wicket was particularly galling to Compton. He was bowled by Australia’s Mervyn Waite…and that was Waite’s only wicket in his whole Test career!