I once ran four on a first-class cricket ground. It almost killed me, especially when my partner called me, red-faced and wheezing, for two off the next ball. The outfield for this charity match at Fenner’s hadn’t been mown, and the opposition were rather geriatric, so it is possible we could have run more if it weren’t for me turning with all the speed of the Queen Mary.
I thought of this knackering feat this week when Peter Jones emailed about his Christmas present: a copy of Godfrey Evans’s autobiography, in which the England wicketkeeper, Peter’s boyhood hero, wrote about making an all-run six with Brian Close in a Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s in 1949. Is that a first-class record, Peter asks, for the highest score run off one ball?
The key word is “run”. Ignoring no-balls — Travis Birt once hit 20 off one legitimate delivery in the Big Bash — there have been four instances in international cricket of eight coming off one ball but three involved an overthrow to the boundary after the batsmen had run four.
On the other occasion, between West Indies and South Africa in 2005, Brian Lara ran three and when the ball was thrown in it hit a fielder’s helmet, gaining five penalty runs. They went down as extras, not to the batsman; Lara was out for 196.
There were spurious claims in the 19th century, in games played without boundaries, of batsmen running up huge scores, such as 286 runs allegedly taken — but not credibly witnessed — when a ball got stuck in a tree in Western Australia. But the highest verified all-run score is 17 in an Australian club match in 1989, when the outfield resembled a jungle.
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To answer Peter’s question about first-class games, though, the record seems to be nine, made with a hit to leg on the vast Parker’s Piece ground by the Hon. FGB Ponsonby in a match for MCC against Cambridge University in 1842. I wonder if his batting partner felt, as I did in the same city 170 years later, slightly resentful for having made such an exertion purely to increase someone else’s score?
Whitelock likes a good yarn
Where Tom Daley leads, the All Blacks follow. If you told most rugby players to take up knitting, it would have them in stitches but Sam Whitelock, the second most-capped New Zealand rugby international, is quite serious. The lock says his hobby helps him to relax. “Mum loved knitting and she didn’t have a daughter so she made all four of us [boys] learn how to knit when we were little,” Whitelock tells The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast.
Daley knitted between dives at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, while 50 Finnish Olympians united at the 2018 Winter Games to knit squares for a large blanket for their president’s baby son. Whitelock admits that most of his team-mates don’t know about his talent but he is happy to encourage them. After all, there are plenty of sheep in New Zealand to provide the wool. Brings a new meaning to “needle match”.
Picture of the week
Wout Van Aert, who won the Green Jersey at last year’s Tour de France, showed that he can pedal just as well on sand as on road in winning the Duinencross race at Koksijde, in his native Belgium. Van Aert is a three-times winner of the off-road Cyclo-cross World Cup.
New year, old job for Ferguson
Sir Alex Ferguson managed one club for 27 years. His son may one day manage one club 27 times. A new year brings an old job for Darren Ferguson, who began a fourth stint with Peterborough United this week, having managed them from 2007 to 2009, 2011 to 2015 and 2019 to 2022. After guiding them into the Championship three times, he resumes with them just outside the play-off places in League One.
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Ferguson joins Jupp Heynckes (Bayern Munich) and Fatih Terim (Galatasaray) as having managed one club four times. Martin Allen seems to hold the English record, with five stints at Barnet between 2003 and 2018, while Emerich Jenei left Steaua Bucharest six times. Barnet is a precarious job. Stan Flashman, the club’s late owner, reportedly sacked Barry Fry as manager eight times but relented on seven of them. Fry, who went on to lead Peterborough twice, later said it felt more like 37.
