A golden summer

Historians call the 1890–1914 period cricket’s Golden Age. Given the manhandling the game has endured thanks to the hooligans of commerce in recent times, the 1970s and 1980s now also seem golden, but the inter-war years were an era of fine, flowing batsmanship. As the country drifted towards war, the 1938 series was no exception. In the absence of express pace bowlers, bat tended to dominate ball, starting from the morning of the first Test at Trent Bridge, Hutton and Charlie Barnett racing to 169 before lunch.

Barnett, a dasher from Gloucestershire, missed the rare feat of scoring a century in the opening session by one run. Eddie Paynter made 216 not out at the rate of 40 runs an hour and Denis Compton, in his second Test, made 102.

Responding for the Australians, Stan Mccabe played an innings of such power and majesty (232 in under four hours) that Bradman summoned his players to the balcony to watch it, telling them they’d never again see batting to equal it. In the second Test at Lords, that most regal of English batsmen, Wally Hammond, scored a 240 of such quality that The Times reckoned it ‘could seldom have been surpassed’. The invincible Bradman scored three centuries in the series.