The term ‘legendary’ is used too easily in sport but Denis Compton’s record – more importantly the way he played – is undoubtedly the stuff of legends.
His is the playbook of post-War cavalier cricket...and to come to one of the most famous cricket grounds in the world with a dodgy knee, seven seasons after your heyday, for your one hundredth innings for your country and then set new records, is, truly, ‘straight out of Compton’.
On 2 July 1954, Seventy years ago, Middlesex’s ‘Brylcreem Boy’ made 278 v Pakistan at Trent Bridge – which remains the highest individual Test score at Nottinghamshire’s world-famous ground, and the highest Test innings of Denis’s illustrious career.
Arunabha Sengupta says this was, “an innings that brought memories of the Compton of 1947 rushing back in throes of nostalgia”. A contemporary press report called it 'a truly wonderful display of batsmanship'.
If that weren’t enough, he also set a record for scoring the most runs (173) between lunch and tea in any Test Match!
This was the last of his five Test centuries at Trent Bridge (he had 18 Test tons in all) and helped him secure a Test average on the ground of an extraordinary 95.50, his best anywhere other than the Queen’s Park Oval, Port of Spain, where he played just one innings.
Only Mike Atherton, who played four more Tests and had nine more Test innings at Trent Bridge, can match Compton’s five centuries.
England won the match comfortably, by an innings and 129 runs, with Compton making half of their declared first innings of 558-6. His batting dominated a game in which other milestone performances went almost unnoticed.
The home side’s favourite Reg Simpson made 101, the last of his four Test hundreds, and shared a stand of 83 with Compton.
Bob Appleyard of Yorkshire made his Test debut and took 5-51 in Pakistan’s first innings – figures that remained his Test best and his only five wicket haul in international cricket.
Compton, who hit 34 boundaries and one six in his 316-ball innings, then shared stands of 153 with Tom Graveney (84) and 192 with Trevor Bailey, who was unbeaten on 36 when England skipper David Sheppard declared.
Bailey recalled that partnership in one of the obituary tributes to Compton: “He was at the peak of his game that day…the best way to sustain the momentum was to give Denis the strike, so I contrived to take a single whenever I could. He had to have the bowling... He was golden in every sense of the word.”
Jim Swanton summarised the day’s play saying that through the innings Compton kept looking at the pavilion balcony for instructions. They were, after all, going for quick runs. But it might not have been quite as Swanton thought.
Skipper Sheppard recalled that: “A television was showing the men’s singles final at Wimbledon between Jaroslav Drobný and Ken Rosewall. Denis wanted to know what was going on because he had backed Rosewall. The signals from the balcony were the set scores, nothing whatsoever to do with the Test.” Such a typical Compton story.
Whatever the motive, Compton on that July day at Trent Bridge broke records, broke Pakistani hearts, and set a target that hasn’t been beaten in seven decades since.
July 2024