No, no, no! Do not lump first-class records in with those from awful slogfests
Long-form game is so different from limitedovers that it should forever be kept apart
In a typically well-argued and thoughtful piece last week, my colleague Jonathan Liew contended that the way cricket presents its statistics and records is wrong. He took the example of Kumar Sangakkara, the Sri Lankan master, who was thwarted in his attempt last week to break one of the game’s more exclusive records. Had Sangakkara gone beyond the 84 he made for Surrey against Essex at Chelmsford he would have scored six centuries in successive first-class innings, a feat managed only by CB Fry (1901), Don Bradman (1938-39) and Mike Procter (1970-71). However, Jonathan made a different point. If we count the centuries Sangakkara has made in limited-overs matches, the one he did not make at Chelmsford would have been his 100th.
The Imperial Cricket Conference, as it then was, decades ago defined a first-class match as one of two inning played over three or more days: so it remains. No one has made 100 centuries in first-class cricket since Mark Ramprakash in 2008; and Jonathan suggested no one might ever do again, because of the reduced amount of first-class cricket that is played. I recall cricket writers saying that in 1973, when Colin Cowdrey scored his 100th hundred, because the championship had been cut since the mid-1960s from 28 to 20 matches a season. But Geoffrey Boycott and John Edrich both reached the landmark in 1977, followed by Glenn Turner, Zaheer Abbas, Dennis Amiss, Graham Gooch, Graeme Hick and, finally, Ramprakash. Of current first-class players, only eight have made more than 50 centuries.
Alastair Cook, with 58 and aged 32, might yet do it; Shivnarine Chanderpaul, 43, has 75, but will have to have a career as lengthy as Jack Hobbs if he is to have a chance of getting his ton.
We forget how much first-class cricket was played until the advent of one-day competitions and four-day matches, with the consequent additional opportunities to break records. There is no level playing field to make one season, or era, of first-class cricket comparable with any other. When Tich Freeman took 304 wickets in 1928, he bowled 1,976.1 overs; last season’s leading wicket-takers, Jeetan Patel and Graham Napier, bowled 616.4 and 470.3 overs respectively and took 69 wickets each.
In 1947, when Denis Compton scored 3,816 runs (the highest ever in a season) including 18 centuries (ditto) at an average of 90, he played 50 first-class innings. Keaton Jennings, the country’s top run scorer last season, managed 29.
But it is not only in terms of the number of opportunities to play first-class innings that almost the entire first-class record book is made irrelevant to today’s game. Let us start with the quality of county players. There were other great names turning out in the eras of Freeman and Compton,
If Bradman were playing today, instead of 99.94, he would probably be averaging 150
however there was an awful lot of rubbish, too.
Fundamentally, the balance between bat and ball was very different. England may have taken 903 off the Australians at the Oval in 1938, and Compton and Bill Edrich might have crucified the bowling attacks of 1947, but it was the bowler who for most of the 20th century was king. That was not least due to the ubiquity in England of the “sticky”; the uncovered, damp, drying wicket where each ball, especially from slow bowlers, was completely unpredictable.
The great batsmen of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s would have been even more monstrous to bowlers on today’s covered wickets; and some of today’s competent bowlers would have looked quite good. Freeman might have taken 300 wickets in an English season, but had little to offer on overseas wickets in hotter, drier climates, and played only 12 Tests.
So, the general rule is that when we assess the great English bowlers of recent years, we should recall that they have generally bowled in far tougher conditions than their forebears; which is why James Anderson should be considered for any all-time greats team. And when we judge a modern batsman of genuinely superb technique, such as Cook or Joe Root, we should ask ourselves how he would have fared in the same team as Compton or Wally Hammond?
Jonathan Liew mentioned the unassailability of Bradman’s career record, suggesting that the amalgamation of first-class and one-day statistics might make it seem less Everest-like. In fact, Bradman was even greater than his figures suggest, and instead of averaging 99.94 in Tests would, if he were playing today, probably be averaging 150.
When one looks at the records of retired players, does the achievement of a long-serving county batsman who has played little or no Test cricket and made 30,000 runs really exceed that of a major Test player who has scored only 25,000 against greatly superior bowling attacks? Of course not. Given how little first-class cricket Test players now play outside international matches, should they not be removed from those records altogether, and judged separately?
Perhaps they should. What should certainly not happen is the lumping together of limited-overs cricket records with those from long-form cricket. The two games are not remotely comparable: they are, indeed, two games.
The imbalance between bat and ball is even greater in one-day matches than in first-class cricket – and, for commercial reasons, it will stay that way. Watching grotesque exhibitions of slogging is more entertaining to people who do not really understand cricket, but have turned up largely to get drunk, than watching a procession back to the pavilion and the bar closing early.
All records merit a health warning; cricket’s first-class ones especially.
But lumping them in with the slogfest statistics would be a significant nail in the already partly sealed coffin of the first-class game. But it cannot be long before what we now call cricket has been divided into two codes, each with the record books it, more or less, deserves.