AEJ Collins

1899

AEJ Collins: a place in history





AEJ Collins: four afternoons, 628 runs © The Cricketer


In 1899 a 13-year-old orphan at Clifton College established a world record which stands to this day. Over four June afternoons, Arthur Edward Jeune Collins scored 628 not out in a junior house match, guaranteeing him cricketing immortality, saddling him with a reputation that haunted him for the rest of his brief life.

Collins's feat should be put into context. House matches were a part of public-school life in those days, and participants ranged from the keen to the no-hopers. The game itself was played on Clifton's Junior School field (used by those under 14) and the playing area was far from conventional. The ground was only 60 yards long, with the boundary on one side was formed by a wall some 70 yards away, while on the other the field sloped away towards the sanatorium in the distance. All hits down the hill had to be run, while other boundaries earned only two runs.

On Thursday, June 22, Collins, described as small, stockily-built, and fair haired, won the toss for Clarke's House against North House and chose to bat. In only 150 minutes that day, he reached 200 not out, being dropped when on 50, 100 and 140.

He resumed the following afternoon, and as news of his progress circulated, spectators, who had been watching the battle between the College and the Old Cliftonians on College Close, began to gather. The Bristol Evening News reported that Collins hit the ball "into Guthrie Road, sometimes into the churchyard, and not infrequently sending the ball away down towards the sanatorium for five or six."

At around 5.30 on the Friday - some five hours after he started - he overtook AE Stoddart's then world-record score of 485 to rapturous applause, and by the end of the second day he was unbeaten on 509. On the Friday his 309 runs had been made at over two runs a minute, and Clarke's House closed on 680 for 8.

After a weekend break - Saturday was the day for inter-school matches, and day boys, like Collins, would not have been in school, and Sunday a day of rest - the massacre resumed at Monday lunchtime. A large crowd gathered and Collins did not disappoint. In 55 minutes he scored 89 more, taking his score to 598, and surviving a fourth chance when on 556. Given that the ninth wicket fell early in the session, Collins had to thank Tom Redfern, the No. 11, for staying with him through to the close on 804 for 9.

The fourth day's play again got underway at 12.30, but the authorities extended the hours available for play in a bid to speed the end of the match. As crowds continued to gather and media interest escalated, the disruption to school life was considerable. Collins played his part, his approach described as "downright reckless" as he hit out, being dropped twice more when on 605 and 619. The slaughter was brought to an end when Redfern was caught at point for 13 - he and Collins had added 138 for the last wicket.



A plaque on the ground - now known as Collins' Piece - where the innings took place © The Cricketer


In all, Collins batted six hours 45 minutes, and his innings was made up of one six, four fives, 31 fours, 33 threes, 146 twos and 87 singles. The scorebook hangs in the pavilion at Clifton, but the task facing the scorers was unenviable and one of them, Edward Peglar, is reported to have said that Collins's score was "628, plus or minus twenty shall we say". Coincidentally, the other scorer was JW Hall, whose father had batted with Edward Tylecote in 1868 when he had set an early world-record score of 404 not out, also at Clifton College. In 1938, Hall wrote a letter to the Times in which he recalled: "The bowling probably deserved all the lordly contempt with which Collins treated it, sending a considerable number of pulls full pitch over the fives courts into the swimming baths to the danger of the occupants."

Faced with such a daunting total, exhausted by chasing leather, and probably desperate to restore some normality to their lives, North House were skittled for 87 in 90 minutes. Collins, who opened the bowling, took 7 for 33 in 21 five-ball overs. Play ended at the completion of the innings. On the Wednesday, the fifth day, North House again meekly surrendered, making 61 in a little over an hour, with Collins taking 4 for 30, as his side won by an innings and 688 runs.

For a while Collins was public property. "Today all men speak of him," wrote one newspaper. "He has a reputation as great as the most advertised soap: he will be immortalised." But even when the immediate impact waned, Collins was constantly reminded of his achievement.

He continued to play cricket (and rugby, boxing, rackets, cross-country, and swimming) and won a place in the Clifton XI in 1901 and 1902, with some success. He chose to follow an Army career, and that severely limited his sporting opportunities, and he never came close to playing first-class cricket, although as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers he did make 58 and 36 against the Royal Artillery at Lord's in 1912. The following year, aged 27, he returned to England on leave, and played a few games for Old Cliftonians, scoring two hundreds during their annual cricket week.

Collins married Ethel Slater in the spring of 1914, and later that summer was sent to France when war broke out. He was killed in action during the first battle of Ypres on November 11 of that year. His two brothers also died during the war.



On the seventh day Collins rested

One hundred years ago this month 13-year-old Arthur Edward Jeune Collins entered cricket history. His passport was an innings of 628 not out, scored over four afternoons in a junior house match at Clifton College. No higher score had ever been made, nor, in any corner of the earth, has a higher been made since.

Around the world millions of games of cricket have been played since June 1899; in none of them has Collins' sextuple-century been matched, though he was run mighty close by Charles John Eady just over two years later, in Tasmania. Eady, playing for Break-o'-Day against Wellington at Hobart in March 1902, scored 566 in under eight hours.

Clifton College, although founded in 1862, had a thriving cricket tradition by the end of the 19th century, not only because W G Grace sent his sons there. The college ground, Clifton Close, had witnessed no fewer than 13 of W G's first-class hundreds for Gloucestershire in the County Championship. A Clifton schoolboy named Edward Tylecote had scored 404 not out on the Close in 1868, then the all-time highest individual total.

However, by the time Arthur Collins entered Clark's House as a new boy at Clifton in 1897, five higher quadruple-centuries had been made, including A C MacLaren's 1895 first-class record of 424 for Lancashire v Somerset, and A E Stoddart's 485 for Hampstead v The Stoics in 1886.

Furthermore, Clifton Close achieved literary immortality during Arthur's first year at the school when Henry Newbolt, an Old Cliftonian, published a slim volume of poems entitled Admirals All, which included the poem Vitai Lampada with its celebrated last line, "Play up! play up! and play the game!"

Arthur was born in India in 1885, the son of a judge in the Indian Civil Service. By the time he started at Clifton he was an orphan whose guardians lived in Tavistock, Devon. He was a reserved boy, short and stockily built, fair-haired and pale. He was remembered by contemporaries as one who led by example, rather than by inspiration, although paradoxically he was regarded as likely to fall short of the highest standards as a cricketer because of his recklessness at the crease.

A photograph of Arthur as a schoolboy reveals a serious, handsome countenance. He was academically bright, and popular. He was modest - throughout his life more annoyed than grateful for the attention his childhood feat brought him. He Played the Game.

A E J Collins led the Clark's House XI to face the North Town Junior XI in a game that began on Thursday, June 22, 1899. The boys (all around the ages of 12 or 13) were not playing on the sacred Close, but on a lesser school ground of irregular dimensions. Hitting the ball over short boundaries on three sides counted just two runs, and on the fourth there was no defined boundary at all, so all runs had to be fully run out.

Collins opened the batting and in the 2.5 hours of play that afternoon scored 200. On Friday he continued in even more commanding form. By the end of the second day he had passed Stoddart's record 485 and reached 509 not out, having been dropped on a mere 400 by 11-year-old Victor Eberle at point.

For some reason the game was not continued over the weekend, but resumed on Monday afternoon, after class. There was only time for 55 minutes' play, and Arthur advanced to 598, still undefeated at the close of play. None of his partners had contributed much in the way of runs, the No 7, Whitty, hit 42 to claim the next highest innings, but several hung around for quite a while as Collins moved serenely on. None more so than the last man, Tom Redfern, who came in with the score 698 for nine, of which his captain had made well over 500.

With much more cricket time on the half-holiday of Tuesday, June 27, Collins, with the dogged Redfern, added yet more to his mind-boggling total. His concentration was perhaps not what it was, for the hero was dropped in the slips at 605 and at square leg at 619. Shortly after the second reprieve, the youngest player on the field, Eberle, made himself highly unpopular with the crowd, hoping for the game's first 1,000, by catching Redfern at point. A E J was left stranded on 628 (out of 836).

His domination of the match nonetheless continued unabated. North Town were dismissed for 87 and 61, Collins taking 11 for 63 in the two innings. On the sixth day Clark's House wrapped things up by an innings and 688 runs. On the seventh day, no doubt, Arthur Collins rested, having become as instantly famous as it was possible to be in 1899.

The score of this truly epic innings survives, and while some have cast doubt upon the recording skills of the youthful scorers, there can be no doubt that Collins made well over 600. One scorer, Edward Peglar, in later years cast an "element of doubt on the last two digits of Collins' total" but stated that "the score was substantially correct - 628 plus or minus 20, shall we say".

So Arthur at worst made 608, and might even have reached 648. The exact figure really doesn't matter; the innings was indisputably the highest ever compiled and is rightly being celebrated at Clifton College 100 years on, with commemorative games, a dinner, a special coaching day and the manufacture of 628 special ties.

Unlike Eady and Stoddart, who actually played against each other in the 1896 Lord's Test, Collins never played first-class cricket. Indeed, he returned to the ranks of mortals in matters sporting. He played for the Clifton XI with some distinction, and for Old Cliftonian teams up until 1913. He became a soldier and played many Army cricket matches. He played once at Lord's, in 1912, scoring 58 and 36 for the Royal Engineers against the Royal Artillery. He was commissioned and returned to India. He married Ethel Slater in the spring of 1914, and barely four months later Lieutenant A E J Collins, RE, was one of the first to leave to fight in France. (Commander-in-Chief Earl Haig was also a Cliftonian.)

Many obituaries in the 1915 Wisden instil into the reader a shocking sense of wasted life, destroyed youth; none more so than that of Arthur Collins, killed in action in November 1914, aged 29.

© The Daily Telegraph

The boy who knew no boundaries

In June of 1899, A. E. J. Collins scored 628 not out, and by doing so established a world record that has stood ever since: The Highest Innings on Record.

By coincidence, Collins played his innings in a school match at Clifton College, where an earlier holder of the record, E. F. S. Tylecote, had made his score. However, as it was a junior house match, Collins played on the Junior School field, situated to one side of the college buildings, and not on the College Close, where senior games took place and where Tylecote made his 404 in 1868. The conditions for play were unusual. An Old Cliftonian described the Junior field in The Athletic News Weekly for July 3, 1899:

"It is 60 yards wide and 100 yards long. Then the ground abruptly slopes (down) nearly three feet ... As they (the wickets) were placed across the narrow section of the ground, there were only 19 yards behind each set of stumps. To the wall, square with them on one side was a distance of 70 yards, while on the other, down the slope . . . all hits had to be run out, there being practically no limit to the space in that direction, for the land shelves away to the sanatorium in the far corner."


Although two sides of the boundary were thus very near to the wicket, all boundary hits -- including those to the wall -- were worth only two runs. Collins, 13 years of age, was playing for Clark's House against North Town in a junior house match towards the latter end of the summer term, 1899. The game began on Thursday, June 22 at some time between 3 and 3.30 p.m. Collins won the toss for Clark's and, with Champion, went out to open the innings. He began quietly, not scoring particularly fast at first, but by the drawing of stumps at 6pm he was 200 not out. He was missed three times: a difficult chance in the outfield when about 50; a fairly easy chance to print at 110; and another difficult chance, this time to third man, at 140.


The next day play began at about the same time. Of course, little attention was being paid to the game at this stage. It was, after all, a relatively unimportant school match. Only a short distance away, though, a large crowd had assembled to watch the Clifton College v Old Cliftonian match on the Close. (This fixture was great event in the school's calendar; half holidays were given on the two days that it took place -- which is what enabled then to be play in the house match on Thursday and Friday.) Collins meanwhile was batting in brilliant fashion, and went quickly to his, third century. Gradually, as the news got around that a young lad was approaching Tylecote's college record, the big match ceased to be an attraction and everyone began crowding around the enclosure where the juniors played. When Collins passed 350 it was to cheers from the spectators. A man had been sent down by The Bristol Evening News to follow the Old Cliftonian game and he was able to clinch something of a scoop for the stop-press, although he listened to too much gossip:


"Collins, a lad under 10, put on runs at an extraordinary rate, and amid considerable enthusiasm he beat the school record of 404. In front of his suddenly-acquired audience Collins was not in the least nervous as he continued to collar the bowling. The brilliancy of his strokes and his reserves of energy -- he never seemed to tire -- were marvelled at. There he was driving the ball up against the college buildings, over the wall into Guthrie Road, and sometimes into St Emmanuel churchyard, and, not infrequently sending the ball away down towards the sanatorium for five or six."


Every landmark in his innings was being loudly signalled by the crowd. Collins was nearing the world record, but still the enthusiasm of the spectators, and his own natural desire to break A. E. Stoddart's record of 485, in no way affected his play". At 5.30, to great cheers -- though the batsman himself seemed quite unconcerned -- the record went. Collins was hitting with as much power as when he commenced and by the close at 6pm he was 509 not out. He had added 309 runs that afternoon in something over two-and-a-half hours, and had become the first batsman ever to score a half-thousand. The total was in the region of 680 for 8, after nearly five-and-a-half hours.


On Saturday the newspapers were full of the story of the wonderful cricket score made by a Clifton College boy. Rather amusingly, W. G. Grace, who had a regular column with The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, had written an article that appeared that morning specifically about A. E. Stoddart and his 'world record score' of 485! The 13-year-old Collins was now the toast of the nation and the junior house match more talked about than the Test match starting in Leeds that Thursday.


(Owing to a long-standing error in Wisden that states Collins batted on five afternoons it has been supposed that there was play on Saturday. This was not the case. Collins's innings lasted only four afternoons; it was the match that lasted five. If for no other reason, play this day would be out of the question because North Town were day-boys and they would not be at school on Saturday -- even if it was only to play cricket!)


Collins resumed his innings on Monday after a break of two days. Usually one afternoon would have sufficed to see a march like this completed, but it was accepted practice that they were played to a finish, so this game now -- with no half-holidays left to assist -- had to continue when it could. This meant the hour's leisure that began at 12.30pm. Thus on Monday there was some 50 to 55 minutes' play. A large crowd gathered, and Collins batted superbly once more. He added 89 and took his score up to 598, giving one chance in the long-field when 566. A wicket had fallen quickly and the innings looked to be finished, but Redfern was the ideal last man. He gave admirable support and stayed to the close, at which point the tenth wicket had added 106, of which Redfern's share was 12.


The national press were lyrical about Collins the next morning. And The Guardian had got hold of his background:


"The hero of the match is an orphan, and was born in India, where his father was engaged in the Civil Service. He went to Clifton College in the winter term two years ago. He had been at school at Cowes and at Bath College previous to going to Clifton, and though he played cricket there, he has, he says, learnt eractically all his cricket at Clifton ... he is remaining there for four years longer, and then intends going to Woolwich. Standing in an easy way, he plays remarkably straight, but watches the ball sharply with his keen blue eyes, and seems as cool as a cucumber. His style suggests that he is a 'born cricketer', and he says he is fond of the game."


At 12.30 on Tuesday the game resumed once more, before another large attendance of spectators, Collins and Redfern going out to the wicket with the total at 804 for 9. All the players had probably by this time been urged to take a positive approach; world records were all very well but the disruption they caused to a school was considerable, and already one pupil could not call his life his own.


Play was extended beyond 1.30pm to help bring about a result. Collins took a two off the first ball he received to give him his 600, and he seemed ready to get a move on -- being 'downright reckless', giving chances at 605, to slip, and at 619. Redfern's was the wicket to fall though, caught at point, after 25 minutes' play, in which time Collins had added 30 and Redfern a single. Collins thus carried his bat for 628 through the innings of 836. North Town, shortly after, went in and were all out in 90 minutes for 87. Collins took 7 for 33 in 21 overs. They had their second innings on Wednesday afternoon and were bundled out for 61, Collins this time taking 4 for 30.


Collins, during his huge innings, had been batting about 6 hours 45 minutes, 6 hours 50 minutes at most. He gave six chances - probably more. On Friday everyone was so dazzled by his brilliant play that they failed one and all to remark on its purity. It seems that the fielding could not be criticised for lacking in effort, despite the ferocity of Collins's batting. His scoring strokes were given as: one six, four fives, 31 fours, 33 threes, 146 twos and 87 singles, but the scorebook is near-illegible in parts, crammed with figures, and these totals could well be wrong. It must have been a trying experience for the two scorers, E. W. Pegler and J. W. Hall. Apart from anything else, they were the only means the large crowd -- and the press -- had of knowing Collins's rapidly-changing score,


Hall, many years later, wrote: "I was myself (subject, I hope and believe, to checking by a master) the depressed and over-worked scorer for the losers during most, if not all, of that innings ... the bowling probably deserved all the lordly contempt with which Collins treated it, sending a considerable number of balls full pitch over the fives courts into the swimming bath to the danger of the occupants."


This was written in a letter to The Times in March 1938, prompted by the recent death of E. F. S. Tylecote. Hall's father, Henry Sinclair Hail, had actually batted with Tylecote during his innings of 404, and was at the wicket with him when he passed William Ward's celebrated score of 278.


The match was over, but the boy Collins found himself in ever-greater demand. He was pestered to death for portraits, photographs and interviews. Meanwhile, congratulations poured into the school for him, including one he must have prized above all: a letter and a bat from A. E. Stoddart. But it was Collins's fate to be constantly reminded of, and associated with, his 628. The score was so immense, its maker so diminutive, that the grotesqueness was, and is, compelling. Collins was, whether he liked it or not, famous. One contemporary newspaper got it right when it said:

"Collins at the age of 13 has sprung into worldwide fame. Who knew him a week ago except his schoolmates and his aunts? Today all men speak of him; he is a household word; he has a reputation as great as the most advertised soap; he will be immortalised in cricket guides; and his name will shine out conspicuously in the lists of records."


Notes

1. Probably through a mistake when the figures were first released to the press, Collins's score was initially given as 501 at the end of Friday's play, but later corrected to 509. This error led to confusion over how many runs Collins scored on Monday, his total varying according to what it was thought he had begun the day with. The alteration of Collins's score from 501 to 509 has also assisted the belief that there was a short period of play on Saturday.
2. At the time, the total at the end of Friday's play was always given as 650 for 8, but this seems to take no account of the extras scored to that point.
3. If there were two scorers, one for Clark's and one for North Town, presumably there were two scorebooks. Whether both remain in existence is another matter. One hangs in the cricket pavilion at Clifton College.

Simon Wilde