If you’ve not seen the field where AEJ Collins got 628 not out, the highest recorded score in all cricket, watch the vid. To fill time as 12thers, I took the camera down to Collins’ piece. The filming is stunning for its crumminess but you get a sense of how tiny the ground is. Collins is adjacent to the Close, where the previous world record of 4o4 had been set by Edward Tylecote in 1868.
The 1899 ground was a practice field for young boys. “It was very short (only 60 yards (55 m) long), with a wall only 70 yards (60 m) away forming the boundary on one side, while the other side was a gentle slope falling away towards the school sanatorium in the distance. The pitch occupied the central 22 yards (20 m) of the narrow field, with the boundary only 17 yards (16 m) behind each set of stumps. Hits to the long boundary, down the slope, had to be all-run, but the three short boundaries only counted for two runs.”
Tom Redfern, this blog’s pseudonym was the last man out in Collins’ innings. And if you’ve got time to kill in the office, sleepy derivatives markets etc, you might want to read a very, very, very long post about Collins and Tylecote from two years ago.
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