A. E. J. Collins - The Famous Match

The Famous Match

Further information: Scorecard of A. E. J. Collins

In 1899, as a 13-year-old schoolboy, Collins scored the highest ever recorded cricket score of 628 not out. This feat took place during a junior school house cricket match between Clarke's House and North Town House. Such matches were timeless, played to a finish however long they took. The match was played on an outfield off Guthrie Road, Bristol, now named Collins' Piece. The ground had both a poor surface and a very unusual shape: 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.

The match commenced on Thursday, 22 June, to take advantage of two half-day holidays while the college team played their annual match against Old Cliftonians nearby. Collins, a right-handed batsman, won the toss for Clarke's House and chose to bat first. Collins hit his first stroke at around 3.30 p.m. By the close of play at 6 p.m., he had scored 200 runs, having been dropped on 50, 100 and 140.

School lessons allowed another two-and-a-half hours' play on Friday, 23 June, and by then news of an exceptional innings had gone round the school. So brilliant was his play that even the crowd watching an Old Cliftonian match being played nearby lost its interest and a large crowd watched Collins' phenomenal performance. Collins' innings almost ended at 400 when an easy catch was dropped by the youngest player on the field, 11-year old Victor Fuller-Eberle, but at around 5.30 p.m., after batting for around five hours, rapturous applause broke out when he passed Andrew Stoddart's world-record score of 485. At the end of the second day, he remained unbeaten on 509 and the team on 680 for 8. His innings was reported as a world record in The Times newspaper on Saturday 24 June; the paper, however, gave Collins's score by the close of play on Friday as 501, his age as 14 and mis-reported his name as "A. E. G. Collins".

The match resumed in the lunch hour on Monday, 26 June, at 12:30 p.m., with a large crowd. By the end of play, Collins had been dropped again, on 556, to reach 598, but another wicket had fallen, and Collins was running out of partners. On Tuesday, 27 June, the school authorities extended the hours available for play in an attempt to finish the match. The crowds grew and media interest escalated, as The Times again reported on the match on Tuesday, and the disruption to school life was considerable. Collins hit out, with his approach being described as "downright reckless". He was dropped twice more, on 605 and 619. After just 25 minutes' play, Collins lost his final partner, Thomas Redfern, caught by Victor Fuller-Eberle at point for 13, with Collins' score on 628. Collins had played less than seven hours' cricket, carrying his bat through his side's innings. He had scored 1 six, 4 fives, 31 fours, 33 threes, 146 twos and 87 singles. The Times once again ran a report, giving the final figures for Collins' innings in its Wednesday June 28 edition—once again, however, they misspelled his third initial.

North Town House, demoralised, were bowled out for 87 in 90 minutes on Tuesday. The match resumed on Wednesday 28 June, when North Town's second innings went even worse, making 61 in just over an hour, so Clarke House won by an innings and 688 runs. Collins showed some ability as an all-rounder, with his right-arm medium pace bowling taking 11 wickets for 63 runs.

The scorebook hangs in the pavilion at Clifton to this day. The scorers faced a difficult task in accurately recording the innings. One of them, Edward Peglar, is said to have remarked that Collins's score was "628, plus or minus twenty shall we say". The other scorer for the match was J.W. Hall, whose father in 1868 had batted with Edward Tylecote, who later played Test cricket for England and whose name is on a poem kept with the Ashes urn. Tylecote had earlier set a world-record score of 404 not out in 1868, also at Clifton. Hall later wrote that "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."

Collins became public property for a long while after the match, forever associated with his great score. "Today all men speak of him," wrote one newspaper, "... he has a reputation as great as the most advertised soap: he will be immortalised." After leaving school, he never wanted to be reminded of his famous innings; nevertheless, he has been remembered well beyond his own lifetime.

Within two years, 31-year-old Australian Test cricketer Charles Eady came close to breaking the record, when he made 566 for Break-o'-Day against Wellington in Hobart in less than eight hours spread over three weeks in March 1902. This remains the closest challenge to Collins' record: only four other players, Dadabhoy Havewala (515), JC Sharp (505 not out), Malhotra Chamanlal (502 not out), and Brian Lara (501 not out) have ever scored more than 500 runs in one innings in any form of cricket; Lara is the only person to have achieved a score of over 500 runs in first-class cricket.