By 31 May 1927 the 23-year-old Wally Hammond had scored 1,042 first-class runs for the season, the first batsman to make 1,000 by the end of May since W.G. Grace in 1895. The achievement announced the post-Hobbs generation and made Hammond a Test certainty for the rest of the decade.
Hammond had nearly died of a parasitic infection contracted on the 1925-26 MCC tour of the West Indies, and had missed all of 1926. His 1927 season was a comeback as well as an arrival.
Hammond had been a Gloucestershire player since 1920 but his early career had been disrupted by a serious illness contracted on MCC's 1925-26 West Indies tour. He returned in 1927 fully fit, and the 1927 English county season was a procession of his hundreds. Through April and May he scored 1,042 runs at an average above 86, with five centuries — the first 1,000 by end of May since W.G. Grace's 1,016 in 1895.
The centuries came against Yorkshire, Surrey, Middlesex, Lancashire and the South Africans. The Yorkshire 187 was made on a damp Headingley surface against Macaulay and Robinson; the South Africans 192 came at Bristol in five-and-a-half hours of pure off-side strokeplay. Wisden, naming Hammond one of its Five Cricketers of the Year for 1928, wrote: 'There has been no better off-side player in living memory.'
Hammond made his Test debut in February 1928 in South Africa and broke into the side as a regular Test batsman during the 1928-29 Ashes (905 series runs in five Tests, an Ashes record that stood for 60 years). The 1927 May figure was, in retrospect, the moment when English cricket realised it would not need to wait long for a successor to Jack Hobbs.
April 1927: hundreds against Surrey and Middlesex in opening matches
May 1927: hundreds against Yorkshire (187), Lancashire and South Africans (192)
31 May 1927: 1,042 runs — first to 1,000 by end of May since Grace 1895
Named Wisden Cricketer of the Year for 1928
Apr 1927
Hammond opens season with century against Surrey
Mid-May 1927
Reaches 1,000 with 187 v Yorkshire at Headingley
31 May 1927
Season aggregate 1,042 — first to 1,000 by end of May since Grace 1895
“There has been no better off-side player in living memory.”
Hammond made his Test debut in February 1928 in South Africa and immediately became a Test regular. In the 1928-29 Ashes he made 905 runs in five Tests, an Ashes record. He played 85 Tests, scored 7,249 runs at 58.45 and was England captain through the 1930s.
1,000 runs by end of May 1927 marked the formal arrival of Wally Hammond — the second-greatest English Test batsman of the 20th century after Hobbs and the man who would dominate English Test cricket for the next 20 years.
Only Glenn Turner (1973) reached 1,000 first-class runs in May after Hammond. The 1927 season was the foundation of the longest first-class career of any English batsman — 50,551 runs at 56.10 between 1920 and 1951.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.