THE SALIERI OF THE GAME

It is one of the oldest and most incongruous records in Test cricket. It has stood for 72 years and in that time it has been approached, equalled, but never surpassed. Give it another week or two. In Mumbai, Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen, tortoise and hare, roundhead and cavalier, drew level with the illustrious trio of Walter Hammond, Colin Cowdrey and Geoffrey Boycott on 22 Test centuries. There were just 11 balls between their feats, a short stretch of rope between two mountaineers. Each did it in suitable style, Cook with a crisp drive for four through cover, and Pietersen with a reverse-sweep to the boundary at third man. It seemed so easy, so inevitable, that you could almost forget that English fans have waited for three decades for it to happen – Boycott's final Test century was scored in Delhi, at the Feroz Shah Kotla, back in December 1981.

In all the excitement of England's extraordinary win, the achievement was a little lost. No doubt the celebrations will be renewed when one or the other of them does what no English batsman has ever been able to and scores a 23rd. The rest of the world must look on in wonder, not through awe but amusement. 22 Test centuries, after all, is a trifle in comparison to Sachin Tendulkar's tally of 51. And he is only one of 22 men who have surpassed it, along with two Sri Lankans, two South Africans, three Pakistanis, four West Indians, four Indians and seven – name them, no peeking – Australians. Looked at like that, this feels a little like celebrating conquering Ben Nevis when the rest of the world is off tackling Everest.

Still, Hammond's total was too many for Andrew Strauss (21 Test centuries), whose attempt on it was cut short by the strains of captaincy, Graham Gooch (20) lost three years because of his lamentable decision to tour South Africa, Len Hutton (19) and Denis Compton (17) both lost six years to the second world war, David Gower (18) was forced to declare early by the whims of the selectors, and ill health hobbled Michael Vaughan (18) and Ken Barrington (20). Cook and Pietersen then, are both on the edge not just of greatness but of being the greatest of English Test batsmen.

Quantity, of course, is only part of the measure. You might find a few folk between the River Tees and River Don who reckon that Boycott was the best that England ever had, but the man himself would never be so presumptuous, or, to be blunt, ignorant. He has always deferred to Hutton, Hammond and Jack Hobbs. Similarly, there will surely be a few old fellows in the pavilion at Lord's who want to make a case for Cowdrey, epitome of the "spirit of cricket" as he supposedly was. But neither would really be in the reckoning for the title of the best batsman England has had. For a start, their success owed a lot to sheer longevity: Boycott played 108 Tests, Cowdrey 114.

Pietersen has played 90, Cook 85. That last, as it happens, is exactly the same number as Hammond had. And while he now shares his plinth with four other men, it is he, of them all, who should be seen as the greatest England has had, measure for measure, and the man that Cook and Pietersen are about to pass. And yet it has been Hammond's fate to be just a touch overlooked when such discussions about the best-ever break out. Despite those 22 centuries and his average, 58.45, when Wisden held its poll to decide on the five finest cricketers of the 20th century, it was Hobbs who was chosen from among the Englishmen. He got 30 votes, Hammond only 18. That left him eighth, behind Dennis Lillee and Frank Worrell, as well as the famous five. Hobbs was the Master, a man with all the shots, but he still fits into a tradition of fine English openers. But we've never had another quite like Hammond.

If he has been a little overlooked, it is because Hammond is Test cricket's Salieri. In the 1928-29 Ashes, he scored a record number of runs in a series, 905, with two double centuries and then two hundreds in the same match, and was acclaimed as the best batsman on the planet. And then Bradman happened. In the 1930 Ashes, the Don made 974. For the rest of his career, Hammond was destined to be only the second-best batsman in the world. "And he was not," as Alan Gibson put it, "a man content to be second best." How it must have irked him that he was one of Bradman's two Test wickets, bowled for 85, even if it was in a match that England won.

In the fourth Test of 1936-37 Ashes, a series in which Australia overturned a 2-0 lead to win 3-2, England were 148 for three on the fifth morning, chasing 392 to win. Hammond, not out overnight, was bowled third ball. England lost. "You wouldn't get the Don out in the first over with the Ashes at stake," moped George Duckworth afterwards. And this, as Gibson says, was always Hammond's problem. "It was not enough for him to do well. He had to do better than Bradman." He never did, but then, who has?

It was Hammond's cross to bear. When he turned amateur in 1938, and became the England captain, Hammond became so determined to "beat Bradman at his own colossal game" that he orchestrated a series so crushingly dull that Neville Cardus remarked that "a new game has been invented, which employs the implements of cricket."

During the first Test, Hammond admonished Compton when he got out for 102 with the score 487 for five. Hammond's biographer Ronald Mason writes that "he had told Compton to play himself in again on reaching his century, and be blowed to pleasure, and excitement and fulfilment of a life's ambition as they are no excuse for getting out when you have been told to stay in." It was Compton's first Test ton. In the fifth Test at the Oval, Hammond's instructions led Hutton to bat interminably onwards to score 364 and had Joe Hardstaff, over 100 not out, playing out a maiden over from Bradman's own bowling when the score was 770 for six. This, as much as anything, damaged his reputation. And in later years, Hammond was remembered by his team-mates as a moody, truculent man, despite all his talent.

It wasn't always so. The weight of the comparison with Bradman seems to have crushed his spirit over time. "Hammond's method, when he is allowed to play as he wishes, shows that he regards fun as the first reason for cricket," wrote RC Robertson-Glasgow in 1943. "He is, quite simply, the greatest cricketer who began playing in the last 20 years." By that, he meant all-rounder rather than batsman, for Hammond was a fine swing bowler and superlative slip fielder as well as a batsman. But more than that, Crusoe – as Robertson-Glasgow was known – was counting those things which cannot be translated into words, "but belong to the brain and heart. I mean the effect on a match of his presence alone; the influence on a bowler's feelings of the sight of Hammond taking guard at about 11.50am, when lunch seemed far and the boundary near."

The more you read about Hammond, the clearer it becomes that it is Pietersen who is closer to being his heir rather than Cook, though he will no doubt go on to outstrip them both. "Hammond never walked to the wicket," said Denzil Batchelor. "He strode." Mason reckoned that as a batsman Hammond "lorded it unabashed like an emperor" and that when taking guard there was "a suspicion of what might be called hostility; the better the opposition the intenser this became. On rare and special occasions it was reinforced by a flavour of insolent contempt." The story goes that, after thumping a series of drives past an energetic young amateur who was darting and diving about at cover in a fruitless attempt to cut them off, Hammond called out "Don't worry, Sonny, I won't hit you."

Hammond's batting, wrote Crusoe, was about "strength scientifically applied. He had a combined power and grace that I have never seen in any other man. I can't think human agency could do more to a ball. To field to him at cover point was a sort of ordeal by fire." When he made 240 at Lord's during the second Ashes Test of 1938, Hammond is said to have given only one chance, and that so fiercely struck it split the fielder's finger as he attempted the catch.

Cast in Bradman's considerable shade at the time, Hammond has come to be completely overshadowed by his rival as the years have passed. If an Australian batsman was about to beat one of Bradman's records, the brouhaha would be heard around the world. Hammond does not have so very many records left and his greatest of all is about to fall. Which is reason enough to remember him here.

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