Triple Century Plus

The toast of every London pub last week was a skinny, buck-toothed 22-year-old lad from Pudsey named Leonard Hutton. With a cricket bat Pudsey's boy had tickled sporting Britain into a grin that stretched from Land's End to John o' Groat's.

What Batsman Hutton had done, no Britisher had ever done before: in the fifth and last Test match with Australia he had scored 364 runs in one innings--and this at a time when English cricket seemed deader than "The Ashes" for which they were playing.--* The new record for the Anglo-Australian series was 30 runs better than the record set in 1930 by Australia's famed Don Bradman. It was even better than the record for all international cricket: 336 (against New Zealand), set in 1933 by Britain's famed Wally Hammond.

Those who witnessed Batsman Hutton's prodigious whacking at Kennington Oval last week will hand the story down to future generations: how it took the best Australian bowlers three days to get him out; how he was at bat 13 1/2hours, ran 6 1/2 miles; how the mayor of Pudsey sent him a telegram after every 50 runs; how, when he surpassed Don Bradman's record, the game was interrupted, all the players shook his hand, a waiter in tails and white tie scampered onto the field with a drink of lemonade, 30,000 spectators rose as one and sang For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.

In spite of England's last-match victory --by the widest margin in its 62-year history--the series was tied, and Australia kept "The Ashes."

--*Australia won the biennial series in 1934, again in 1936. This year the first two games were drawn, the third abandoned because of rain, the fourth taken by Australia. The mythical "Ashes," famed prize of Anglo-Australian cricket, were created by a monumental British joke: a facetious epitaph for English cricket, published in the London Sporting Times in 1882, after a visiting Australian team had trounced England at her own game.

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