On the seventh day Collins rested
Tim Rice recalls 13-year-old Arthur Edward Jeune Collins's place in cricket history
Tim Rice
12-Apr-2007
One hundred years ago this month 13-year-old Arthur Edward Jeune Collins entered cricket history. His passport was an innings of 628 not out, scored over four afternoons in a junior house match at Clifton College. No higher score had ever been made, nor, in any corner of the earth, has a higher been made since.
Around the world millions of games of cricket have been played since
June 1899; in none of them has Collins' sextuple-century been
matched, though he was run mighty close by Charles John Eady just
over two years later, in Tasmania. Eady, playing for Break-o'-Day
against Wellington at Hobart in March 1902, scored 566 in under eight
hours.
Clifton College, although founded in 1862, had a thriving cricket
tradition by the end of the 19th century, not only because W G Grace
sent his sons there. The college ground, Clifton Close, had witnessed
no fewer than 13 of W G's first-class hundreds for Gloucestershire in
the County Championship. A Clifton schoolboy named Edward Tylecote
had scored 404 not out on the Close in 1868, then the all-time
highest individual total.
However, by the time Arthur Collins entered Clark's House as a new
boy at Clifton in 1897, five higher quadruple-centuries had been
made, including A C MacLaren's 1895 first-class record of 424 for
Lancashire v Somerset, and A E Stoddart's 485 for Hampstead v The
Stoics in 1886.
Furthermore, Clifton Close achieved literary immortality during Arthur's first year at the school when Henry Newbolt, an Old Cliftonian, published a slim volume of poems entitled Admirals All, which included the poem Vitai Lampada with its celebrated last line, "Play up! play up! and play the game!"
Arthur was born in India in 1885, the son of a judge in the Indian Civil Service. By the time he started at Clifton he was an orphan whose guardians lived in Tavistock, Devon. He was a reserved boy, short and stockily built, fair-haired and pale. He was remembered by contemporaries as one who led by example, rather than by inspiration, although paradoxically he was regarded as likely to fall short of the highest standards as a cricketer because of his recklessness at the crease.
A photograph of Arthur as a schoolboy reveals a serious, handsome countenance. He was academically bright, and popular. He was modest - throughout his life more annoyed than grateful for the attention his childhood feat brought him. He Played the Game.
A E J Collins led the Clark's House XI to face the North Town Junior XI in a game that began on Thursday, June 22, 1899. The boys (all around the ages of 12 or 13) were not playing on the sacred Close,
but on a lesser school ground of irregular dimensions. Hitting the
ball over short boundaries on three sides counted just two runs, and
on the fourth there was no defined boundary at all, so all runs had
to be fully run out.
Collins opened the batting and in the 2.5 hours of play that
afternoon scored 200. On Friday he continued in even more commanding
form. By the end of the second day he had passed Stoddart's record
485 and reached 509 not out, having been dropped on a mere 400 by
11-year-old Victor Eberle at point.
For some reason the game was not continued over the weekend, but
resumed on Monday afternoon, after class. There was only time for 55
minutes' play, and Arthur advanced to 598, still undefeated at the
close of play. None of his partners had contributed much in the way
of runs, the No 7, Whitty, hit 42 to claim the next highest innings,
but several hung around for quite a while as Collins moved serenely
on. None more so than the last man, Tom Redfern, who came in with the
score 698 for nine, of which his captain had made well over 500.
With much more cricket time on the half-holiday of Tuesday, June 27,
Collins, with the dogged Redfern, added yet more to his mind-boggling
total. His concentration was perhaps not what it was, for the hero
was dropped in the slips at 605 and at square leg at 619. Shortly
after the second reprieve, the youngest player on the field, Eberle,
made himself highly unpopular with the crowd, hoping for the game's
first 1,000, by catching Redfern at point. A E J was left stranded on
628 (out of 836).
His domination of the match nonetheless continued unabated. North
Town were dismissed for 87 and 61, Collins taking 11 for 63 in the
two innings. On the sixth day Clark's House wrapped things up by an
innings and 688 runs. On the seventh day, no doubt, Arthur Collins
rested, having become as instantly famous as it was possible to be in
1899.
The score of this truly epic innings survives, and while some have
cast doubt upon the recording skills of the youthful scorers, there
can be no doubt that Collins made well over 600. One scorer, Edward
Peglar, in later years cast an "element of doubt on the last two
digits of Collins' total" but stated that "the score was
substantially correct - 628 plus or minus 20, shall we say".
So Arthur at worst made 608, and might even have reached 648. The
exact figure really doesn't matter; the innings was indisputably the
highest ever compiled and is rightly being celebrated at Clifton
College 100 years on, with commemorative games, a dinner, a special
coaching day and the manufacture of 628 special ties.
Unlike Eady and Stoddart, who actually played against each other in
the 1896 Lord's Test, Collins never played first-class cricket.
Indeed, he returned to the ranks of mortals in matters sporting. He
played for the Clifton XI with some distinction, and for Old
Cliftonian teams up until 1913. He became a soldier and played many
Army cricket matches. He played once at Lord's, in 1912, scoring 58
and 36 for the Royal Engineers against the Royal Artillery. He was
commissioned and returned to India. He married Ethel Slater in the
spring of 1914, and barely four months later Lieutenant A E J
Collins, RE, was one of the first to leave to fight in France.
(Commander-in-Chief Earl Haig was also a Cliftonian.)
Many obituaries in the 1915 Wisden instil into the reader a shocking sense of wasted life, destroyed youth; none more so than that of Arthur Collins, killed in action in November 1914, aged 29.