Thirty-five, in 114 balls

The Newlands card of April 1899 is Test number 59, a three-day match, the second of two. England chose to bat and made 92. South Africa made 177. England made 330. South Africa, needing 246, made 35. The result line reads England won by 210 runs, and the card’s note says the last innings lasted 114 balls.

Ninety-two, and 177

Jimmy Sinclair took six for 26 from twelve overs and Bonnor Middleton four for 18, and England were all out for 92 in 48 overs, Pelham Warner top-scoring with 31. Lord Hawke, the captain, batted at eleven and made 1.

South Africa were 126 for seven at the close, Sinclair 59 not out, and 177 all out after the Sunday rest day. Sinclair made 106 with nine fours and was last out, caught Johnny Tyldesley bowled Trott. The card’s note says it was his country’s first Test hundred, following its first Test fifty, which he had made in the previous match, and his own first in first-class cricket.

Trott took four for 69, Haigh three for 88. The lead was 85.

Full scorecard: South Africa v England, 2nd Test, Cape Town, 1–4 April 1899 →

Three hundred and thirty

Tyldesley made 112 and was seventh out at 281. Frank Mitchell 41, Frank Milligan 38, Haigh 25, Alfred Archer 24 not out on debut. England were 221 for five at the close of the second day and all out for 330 on the third morning, George Rowe three for 93 from 41 overs, Sinclair three for 63. South Africa needed 246 with most of a day to get them.

Ten for 17

William Shalders and Albert Powell put on 18. Then the ledger. Shalders leg before Haigh, 8. Powell bowled Haigh, 11: 21 for two. Murray Bisset, the captain, bowled Trott, 1: 21 for three. Howard Francis caught Haigh bowled Trott, 2: 27 for four. Sinclair caught Milligan bowled Haigh, 4: 27 for five.

Frederick Kuys bowled Trott, 0: 28 for six. Barberton Halliwell bowled Haigh, 1: 28 for seven. Charles Prince bowled Haigh, 1: 31 for eight. Robert Graham bowled Trott, 2: 35 for nine. Rowe caught Mitchell bowled Haigh, 0: 35 all out. Middleton was 0 not out. Extras were 5, all byes, which is a seventh of the total.

Haigh 11.4 overs, six maidens, 11 runs, six wickets. Trott eleven overs, five maidens, 19 runs, four wickets. Nobody else bowled. Ten wickets fell for 17 runs, and the last nine batters made 11 between them.

One hundred and fourteen

The card gives the innings as 22.4 overs and the note gives it as 114 balls. Twenty-two overs and four balls come to 114 only if an over is five balls, which is the arithmetic the card leaves for the reader: the overs at Newlands in 1899 were five balls long. Fifty-nine of the 114 were bowled by Haigh and 55 by Trott, and every one of the ten wickets came from either end of the same pair.

Where 35 sits

Wikipedia’s list of Test records puts 35 fifth among the lowest completed innings. Below it are 26, 27, and two 30s. Both of the 30s are South Africa against England: Port Elizabeth in 1896, three years before this card, and Edgbaston in 1924, a quarter of a century after it. The Port Elizabeth innings was 94 balls; this one was 114.

The same page, and the tour page, say the matches of Lord Hawke’s tour were awarded Test status afterwards. So the 35 was not a Test total on the day it was made. Trott, who took four of the wickets, had played three Tests for Australia before this and Wikipedia has him as the last man to play for both countries. Haigh played eleven Tests and took 24 wickets, six of them here.

Sinclair, whose 106 stood between the two English innings, is on Wikipedia as the first player from any country to score a hundred and take five wickets in an innings in the same Test. Its figure for the six-for is 6 for 30; the card says 6 for 26. The series line reads England won the 2-match series 2-0. Five men made their debuts, four of them South African. The umpires were Archibald White and Frank Hearne.

What the card holds

A 92 answered by 177, then a 330. A first hundred for a country, by a man who had also taken six wickets. A chase of 246 that reached 18 without loss and 35 all out. Two bowlers, 114 balls, ten wickets. And an over length the card never states but cannot hide, because 22.4 and 114 only agree one way.

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No. 17 in Collapse, a series of 17.

TomorrowDeclared at 176 for four