Compton denied place in exclusive club

By Andrew Hignell

So rain has cruelly prevented Nick Compton from becoming the ninth batsman in first-class cricket history to score 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May.

The Somerset batsman was at the crease, and fifty runs short of his target, when rain brought an early end to the second day’s play in the LV= County Championship match against Worcestershire at New Road.

Ironically, the Worcester ground has a special association with the select group of batsmen who have previously achieved the feat. Indeed, when Sir Donald Bradman achieved the feat twice in the Thirties - in 1930 and 1938 - he began with a double-hundred at Worcester’s headquarters for the touring side.

In 1988 Worcestershire’s Graeme Hick became the most recent batsman to join this rather exclusive club as he followed the likes of W.G.Grace, Glenn Turner, Wally Hammond and Bill Edrich.
 
Hick’s aggregate was bloated by his record-breaking innings of 405 not out at Taunton and, in reaching the landmark, the Zimbabwe-born batsman recorded four single figure scores. In contrast, Compton has only been out twice for single figures so far in 2012, as the list below shows:

2012 
Nick Compton
  
March 31        Som v Cdf MCCU 236 
April 5            Som v Middx 99, 8 
April 12          Warw v Som 5, 133 
April 19          Notts v Som 204* 
April 26          Som v Lancs 30* 
May 10           Eng Lions v West Indians 21 
May 16           Surrey v Som 83, 50
May 22           Som v Durham 64, 8   
May 31           Som v Worcs  9*   

1988
Graeme Hick

April 16           MCC v Notts 61, 37
April 21          Lancs v Worcs 212
April 28          Worcs v Notts 86, 14
May 5             Som v Worcs 405*
May 18           Worcs v Som 8, 11
May 21           Leics v Worcs 6, 7
May 28           Worcs v West Indians 172

Before the weather intervened to deny Compton, a few curmudgeonly statisticians had queried if the feat could be compared to that of Bradman, Hick et al given the fact that the Somerset man had actually batted in three calendar months – March, April and May.

Those statisticians instead pointed to the achievements of Wally Hammond who, in 1927, scored more than 1,000 runs solely during the month of May. Whatever your view, one can only admire the prodigious achievements of the Gloucestershire strokemaker 85 years ago, as outlined in the table below, especially as Hammond had missed all of the previous season in 1926 with a serious illness contracted while on tour in the Caribbean.

1927 
Wally Hammond
 
May 7           Yorks v Glos 27, 135
May 11         Glos v Surrey 108, 128
May 14         Glos v Yorks 17, 11
May 18         Lancs v Glos 99, 187
May 21         Glos v Leics 4, 30
May 25         Glos v Middx 83, 7
May 28         Hants v Glos 192
 

Date: 31/05/2012 18:41:41 by Andrew Hignell
In: Today | Somerset |