England v Australia
1926-08-16
On the third morning of the fifth Test of 1926, after overnight thunderstorms had turned the Oval pitch into one of the most treacherous in Test history, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe added 172 for the first wicket — Hobbs 100, Sutcliffe 161 — in an innings widely regarded as the finest piece of opening batting in cricket.
Australia v England
1925-01-01
On a rain-affected New Year's Day at the MCG in 1925, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe walked out to open and put on 283 — at the time the highest opening stand in Ashes Test history and an innings that announced one of the great opening partnerships of all cricket. England lost the match but the partnership had begun in earnest.
Australia v England
1925-03-04
Herbert Collins's Australians retained the Ashes 4-1 in the long, hot summer of 1924-25, but the central story of the series was the bowling of Maurice Tate — 38 wickets in five Tests, then a world record for any bowler in an Ashes series — and the formation, finally, of the Hobbs-Sutcliffe opening partnership.
Surrey v Somerset
1925-08-17
On Monday 17 August 1925 at Taunton, the 42-year-old Jack Hobbs cut a Jim Bridges short ball for four to reach 101 — his 126th first-class century, equalling W.G. Grace's career record. The next morning he made another, 101 not out, and the 'Master' had passed the figure that had defined English batting since 1895.
Surrey
1919-09-01
Jack Hobbs returned to first-class cricket in May 1919, aged 36 after a four-year war-imposed break, and immediately scored 2,594 runs at 60.32 in the experimental two-day season — confirming that the world's leading batsman had picked up exactly where he had left off in 1914.
Surrey
1914-08-26
Jack Hobbs scored 2,697 first-class runs at 58.63 in the truncated 1914 season, including 11 centuries. He was 31, at the absolute peak of his powers, and would not play another full first-class season until 1919, by which time he was 36.
Surrey
1914-08-25
Tom Hayward, the Surrey opener who had partnered Jack Hobbs for nearly a decade and been one of the leading English professionals of the Edwardian age, played his final first-class season in 1914. The interruption of the war meant he never had a proper farewell match.
Australia vs England
1912-02-09
Jack Hobbs (178) and Wilfred Rhodes (179) put on 323 for the first wicket at Melbourne, setting a Test record that stood for 22 years and remains England's highest opening partnership against Australia more than a century later.
Australia vs England
1912-03-01
England's seam pair Sydney Barnes and Frank Foster shared 66 of the 95 Australian wickets to fall as Plum Warner's MCC side, captained by Johnny Douglas after Warner fell ill, lost the opening Test in Sydney and then won four in a row to take the series 4-1.
England
1910-12-15
Wilfred Rhodes had begun his Test career in 1899 batting at number eleven for England; through 1910-12 he was promoted up the order until, on the 1911-12 tour of Australia, he was opening with Jack Hobbs. The transformation produced one of cricket's great opening pairs and culminated in the 323-run stand at Melbourne.
Surrey, England
1906-09-01
Tom Hayward of Surrey was the second man (after W.G. Grace in 1895) to score 1,000 runs before the end of May, achieving the feat in 1900. In 1906 he set a new English first-class record aggregate of 3,518 runs in a season — a figure not surpassed until Compton and Edrich in 1947.