Eleven extras in thirty

South Africa put England in at Edgbaston on 14 June 1924 and bowled 124 overs on the first day and the second morning while England made 438. Then they batted, and were all out for 30 in 12.3 overs. Nineteen of the runs came off the bat.

Four hundred and thirty-eight

Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe, in Sutcliffe’s first Test, put on 136 for the first wicket. Hobbs made 76, Sutcliffe 64, Frank Woolley 64, Patsy Hendren 74, Roy Kilner 59. George Parker took six for 152 from 37 overs. England were 398 for seven on the Saturday night, Sunday was a rest day, and the last three wickets added 40 on the Monday morning.

Full scorecard: England v South Africa, 1st Test, Edgbaston, 14–17 June 1924 →

Twelve overs and three balls

Arthur Gilligan, the captain, opened the bowling. Maurice Tate, in his first Test, took the other end. They were the only two bowlers used.

Bob Catterall bowled Gilligan for 0 at 1. Fred Susskind caught for 3 at 4. Dave Nourse leg before for 1 at 6. Herbie Taylor, the captain, bowled Tate for 7 at 14, and 7 was the top score. Jimmy Blanckenberg bowled for 4 at 20.

Nummy Deane bowled for 2 and Buster Nupen bowled for 0, both at 23. Sid Pegler bowled for 0 at 24. Tommy Ward bowled for 1 and Parker leg before for 0, both at 30. Mick Commaille was 1 not out. Eight of the ten were bowled or leg before; the ball was going through, and the batters were not.

Gilligan: 6.3 overs, four maidens, 7 runs, six wickets, the last two in the over that ended it. Tate: six overs, one maiden, 12 runs, four wickets. Extras: a bye, seven leg byes, three no-balls, 11. The eleven batters made 19 between them, and the fielding side’s untidiness contributed more than any one of them.

Three hundred and ninety

South Africa followed on, 408 behind, and batted for 143.4 overs. Catterall, who had been bowled for 0 in the first innings, made 120 with 15 fours and two sixes. Susskind made 51, Blanckenberg 56, Taylor 34, Nourse 34. They were 274 for four at the close of the second day and all out for 390 on the third.

Gilligan took five for 83 and Tate four for 103 from 50.4 overs. Between them in the match they took nineteen of the twenty wickets, and the one they did not take was a run-out. England won by an innings and 18, and the card lists eight debutants, five of them English, among them Sutcliffe, Tate, Percy Chapman and Kilner.

Two thirties

South Africa had made 30 once before, at Port Elizabeth in 1896, in 94 balls with no extras at all. Edgbaston’s 30 took 75 balls and had eleven. The 1896 innings was all bat; the 1924 one was a third sundries. They are the same number on the card and different innings underneath it.

One of the umpires at Edgbaston was Harry Butt, who had kept wicket for England at Port Elizabeth in 1896. He was on the field for both thirties, twenty-eight years apart, behind the stumps for the first and in a white coat for the second. The other umpire was Bill Reeves.

What the card holds

Thirty all out with eleven extras and a top score of 7. Two bowlers, six for 7 and four for 12, and no third. A follow-on of 408 answered with 390, so that the side bowled out for 30 on the Monday was still batting on the Tuesday. And a first-day partnership of 136 between two openers whose names were about to become one word.

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No. 12 in Collapse, a series of 16.

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