SUTCLIFFE’S RECORD IN THE TESTS

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7031, 15 December 1932, Page 10

SUTCLIFFE’S RECORD IN THE TESTS

Second Englishman To Make Over 2000 Runs In These Matches Although he started in Test cricket 16 years later than J. B. Hobbs did—take out the war years and the period is equivalent to a dozen years, the difference in their ages—Herbert Sutcliffe looks like equalling the splendid Surrey batsman’s record of 12 centuries for England against Australia for within a dozen years of Hobbs’s retirement from Test cricket. Six of Sutcliffe’s Test centuries have been made in Australia. The great Yorkshire batsman is an examplar of Neville Cardus’s remark that nowadays batting is a science, whereas 30 years ago it was a culture. Sutcliffe’s strokeplay is coldly scientilic—highly polished, but wholly systematic. An Australian “shirt-front” wicket, on which the length ball comes along at but little variation in height, suits him admirably. So docs the calm, unhurried method of Test-match cricket in which there is no time-limit on a match. Even when he scores rapidly—and he can hit hard and often when he chooses to do so—it is by a method of pro-, gressive acceleration, generally after he has settled himself well in after a rather slowly scored 50. It is true that averages indicate that Sutcliffe scores better, in matches between England and Australia, on English wickets than on Australian, for his average in Tests in England is higher than it is in Australia. But three un-

_ Sutcliffe is only the second Englishman to score over 2000 runs in Test cricket against Australia. . Before this series opened he had _ made 1997 runs against Australia, at an average of 73.96 runs for each completed innings. J. B. Hobbs has scored 3636 runs, at an average of 54.26, against Australia. Sutcliffe, 38, is just on 12 years younger than Hobbs.

It was on the Sydney Cricket Ground that Sutcliffe made his first appearance in such matches, and he scored a century then. That was for the team captained by Arthur Gilligan, in. the 192425 season; he made 59 in the first innings and 115 in the second. His four other centuries in Tests in Australia, before the present one, were scored in Melbourne.

In the second match of the 1924-25 series Sutcliffe scored 176 and 127. His fourth three-figure score was in the fourth Test; it was 143. The nest was in -his second visit to the Commonwealth, in A. P. F. Chapman’s team, in the 1928-29 season. He then made 135 in the second innings of the third Test. Besides making at Sydney his first century in Test cricket, Sutcliffe also made on that ground his only “duck” against Australia, That was in the fifth. Test of his first series; he made 22 in the first innings of that game. Indeed, his lowest three scores in Tests in Australia have been made on that ground; in the second match of the 1928-29 series lie was dismissed for 11. Sutcliffe’s two centuries for England against Australia in England were both made at Kennington oval—one in 1926, and the other in 1930 —and each was a score of 161 runs.