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John Minshull
107
Duke of Dorset’s XI v Wrotham
The Vine, Sevenoaks
August 1769
On 31 August 1769, John Minshull, or was it Minchin, playing for Sevenoaks, or was it the Duke of Dorset’s XI, made cricket’s first ever hundred – or maybe he didn’t. Perhaps John Small had scored one the season before, but didn’t have the good fortune for anyone to write it down.
Cricket’s misty past offers only partial answers. Minshull’s hundred was at very least the first one recorded and if that twilit knock is hard to pin down, the player himself is easier to imagine. “A thickset man and about 5ft 9in in height,” he was born in Acton in 1741. By the summer of ’69 he was employed as head gardener at Knole House, seat of the Duke of Dorset, who was smitten enough with Minshull’s cricketing ability to pay him 20 guineas a year to work in the garden and, more importantly, appear for his team.
The match was played over two innings, Minshull appearing on the card as “Minchin” and top scoring in the first with 18. In 1769 that alone was a tally worth his 20 guineas, but in the second innings came something extraordinary. On a pitch kept trimmed by grazing sheep and without formal boundaries, Minshull hit 34 singles, 15 twos, nine threes and four all-run fours to make a score that would flatter an entire team.
The knock seems to have gone straight to Minshull’s head. John Nyren, writing in Cricketers of My Time, describes him as, “conceited as a wagtail and from constantly aping what he had no pretensions to, was, on that account only, not estimated according to the price at which he had rated his own merits”.
Now that doesn’t sound like any great batter worth their salt. Jon Hotten
Harmanpreet Kaur
171* (115 balls, 143 minutes, 20 fours, 7 sixes)
India v Australia, World Cup semi-final
County Ground, Derby
June 2017
Measurable consequences? Well, it got India to the World Cup final, at a packed Lord’s, a game that would be beamed live to a suddenly rapt Indian public, in turn freeing up much-needed funding and starting the gun for the Women’s Premier League. And usefully it showed that Australia could be beaten.
But much more than that, this was the innings: the perfect projection of what women’s batting could look like, the ceilings it could smash, the thrills it could offer, the jaw-dropping wrist work, the extraordinary Trumper-like backlift, the mad, inexplicable timing, the sheer balls of it all. Seven sixes. Harmanpreet went from her hundred to 171 in 25 balls, swatted with a regal air of stupendous entitlement. Her stage, her future. Every shot an invocation, screamed to the skies. “Do you get it now?! Good. So, open your mind, pay attention, and let’s see where this takes us …” Phil Walker
Alfred Mynn
125*
North v South
Barker’s Ground, Leicester
August 1836
A hulking all-rounder adored by the English public, Mynn understood the value of putting on a good show. His most memorable turn from a colourful career would have far-reaching consequences.
Struck on the ankle in the lead-up to a showdown between England’s premier cricketers, Mynn was targeted by Samuel Redgate, the North’s express quick, receiving numerous blows to the injured area. ‘The Lion of Kent’ met fire with fire, dispatching Redgate to all parts on his way to a heroic maiden first-class hundred.
Greeted by his captain as he left the field, there were gasps when Mynn removed his trousers. “A fearful sight met their eyes,” wrote David Frith in The Fast Men. “The leg, usually the size of Goliath’s, was grotesque from swelling and inflammation. It was unbelievable that a man could have stood on it, let alone batted – against Redgate – for five hours.”
Mynn’s enormous frame was hefted on to the roof of a stagecoach where he was taken to a London hospital for emergency treatment. Such was the severity of the injury that surgeons debated whether his leg would need to be amputated but Mynn eventually regained full use of the limb and returned to cricket two years later.
It’s believed that upon his return Mynn wore leg guards to protect against further injury, leading the way for the popularisation of batting pads in the mid 19th century as overarm became the dominant bowling style. Jo Harman
Enid Bakewell
113 (258 minutes, 4 fours)
Australia v England, 1st Test
Thebarton Oval, Adelaide
December 1968
A woman’s role in the 1960s was to stay at home all day and have dinner ready when their husband walked through the door, while the idea of a man changing a nappy was laughable. In fact, the official guidance for mothers at the time was that leaving their babies for any length of time was neglect.
Viewed through that lens, the decision by Enid Bakewell in 1968 to leave her three-year-old daughter in the care of her husband and travel 10,000 miles to go on a four-month tour of Australia and New Zealand was remarkable. It also proved revolutionary: women’s Test cricket had been a fixture for over three decades by the time Bakewell arrived in Australia, but the hundred which she hit on Test debut in Adelaide was the first ever scored by a mother.
The match ended in a draw, as did the series, but it marked the start of the career of one of England’s great all-rounders. Bakewell would go on to score two hundreds and six half-centuries on the 1968/69 tour, as well as taking nine five wicket-hauls with her off-spin, earning her a full-page feature in the 1970 edition of Wisden (the first woman to achieve the honour). Her husband apparently wrote to her during the tour to complain about being left holding the baby, but that didn’t stop Enid: five years later, by then a mother of three, she scored another brilliant hundred in the final of the first World Cup.
Bakewell’s achievements coincided with the onset of second-wave feminism; every run she scored and every wicket she took helped change the way society viewed the role of women. Enid Bakewell showed that mothers can be cricketers too. Raf Nicholson
Stan McCabe
187* (233 balls, 242 minutes, 25 fours)
Australia v England, 1st Test
SCG, Sydney
December 1932
A short while before Stan McCabe stepped out from behind the white picket gate to face the mob for the first time, he sought out his parents, seething in the pavilion, with an instruction. When it turns nasty, he told them, they were not allowed under any circumstances to jump the fence and punch the England captain.
Stan knew what was coming. They all did. It had been presaged in the press and the warm-up games. What’s more, with Bradman curiously unavailable for the first Test, he figured he’d be facing it on his own.
Day one, it’s all going off. The Hill, centre of a crowd 40,000-strong, is in fresh uproar. The top order’s been bounced and bombed and McCabe, the local boy, is going to cop it too. Jardine places six men on the leg-side and gives Larwood the nod. McCabe takes to moving back and across, going inside the line, eyeballing the leather.
Forget the wisdom. No one thought it possible. It just wasn’t considered an option. Bradman, had he been there, would have snickered at the very notion, backed away, corkscrewed his neck and looked to carve; and some weeks later at Adelaide he did exactly that.
But this was no hit and hope. McCabe dealt with the problem tidily, graciously, and as his instincts compelled him, with immaculate back-foot technique and limitless good cheer. He got up on his toes to ride the bounce. He hooked with high hands coming down on the ball. He talked amiably enough to England’s death circle of close-in catchers. In all he made just 18 runs in front of square yet didn’t give a chance. He finished that first day 126 not out and the next morning simply carried on.
It was a bloodbath of course. No other Australian made fifty in the match, Larwood took five and five, Australia lost by 10 wickets. Bradman returned for Adelaide to make a duck and a hundred – his average cut down by half for the rest of the series.
And so in time McCabe’s miracle would take on its own trajectory, ascending celestially above the debris and rubble wrought by that series, its spotlessness serving to uglify the carnality at the heart of Jardine’s great experiment. It has come to be seen as the entire extent of Australian resistance. A nation’s favourite innings. Phil Walker
Learie Constantine
103
Middlesex v West Indians
Lord’s, London
June 1928
Can the improvement of British race relations and the rise of West Indies as a cricketing power be ascribed to a single hundred in a tour game against Middlesex? The nonlinear history starts in June 1928, two weeks before Windies’ inaugural Test, when the enterprising committeemen of Nelson CC headed to Lord’s to scout Learie Constantine. Six years earlier, they had enticed Australia’s opening bowler Ted MacDonald to Seedhill, the Lancashire League’s first ‘sensation signing’, and now they sought a replacement for South African Test all-rounder Jimmy Blanckenberg.
Constantine followed a first-innings 86 with figures of 7-56 to set up a chase of 259. Entering at 121-5, he raced to three figures in an hour, scoring 103 of the 133 runs made while he was out there. Impressed by the pyrotechnics, Nelson signed him up and ‘Connie’, the Port-of-Spain law clerk, handed in his notice. Nine years at Seedhill brought enormous crowds, seven league titles and two cups. He was reputedly the highest paid athlete in the country.
He departed for Rochdale in 1938 and with the outbreak of the second world war opted to stay in England, working as a welfare officer for Caribbean immigrants called into the war effort, earning him an MBE in 1946. Two years before that, when the Imperial Hotel in London u-turned on his booking after a complaint by American GIs, Constantine won a court case which ultimately helped overhaul the country’s race laws. A knighthood followed in 1962 and he became the UK’s first black peer in 1969.
His onfield success at Nelson prompted an arms race, and a galaxy of exotic stars descended on the Lancashire leagues. In 1962, Constantine’s compatriot CLR James wrote in Beyond A Boundary that “West Indian cricket has arrived at maturity because of two factors: the rise in the financial position of the coloured middle class and the high fees paid to players by the English leagues”. Connie was the trailblazer, and that Lord’s ton set it all off. Scott Oliver
Colin Cowdrey
154 (621 balls, 500 minutes, 16 fours)
England v West Indies, 1st Test
Edgbaston, Birmingham
June 1957
By the buttoned-up standards of the day, the editor’s notes in the 1958 Wisden Almanack amounted to a scathing condemnation. Pad play was “an annoying modern practice” which “showed the game in an adverse light”.
The catalyst for this moral panic was the previous year’s Edgbaston Test, when Colin Cowdrey, with help from Peter May, kicked the mystery out of Sonny Ramadhin in a match-saving partnership of 411 in 191 overs. On West Indies’ previous tour of England seven years earlier, Ramadhin and his little pal Alf Valentine had spun them to a stunning 3-1 victory. This time England planned to hit him out of the series – until they were skittled for 186 on the first day of the first Test, with Ramadhin taking 7-49.
In the second innings, with a deficit of 288, their captain May decided to play Ramadhin as an off-spinner, using the front pad as the first line of defence where necessary and calculating that the leg-spinner would miss the outside edge. If you can’t pick him, kick him. May and Cowdrey did so with impunity: in those days a batter couldn’t be out lbw if they were hit outside the line, whether they were playing a shot or not. And even when they were hit in line, a decent stride was enough for umpires to give them the benefit of a doubt that was not fully erased until DRS gave everyone new glasses.
In his history of West Indies cricket, Michael Manley estimates that Ramadhin had at least 50 lbw appeals turned down. Each one crushed a bit more of his spirit. “The gentlemen in white coats must have seemed to him like Russian diplomats at their most obstinate as they vetoed his requests,” wrote John Woodcock in The Times.
Legend has it the two batters were equally pad-happy but Cowdrey was the more defensive. He took – and this isn’t a misprint – 535 balls to reach his century, scoring 154 from 621 overall. May faced four more deliveries and scored 131 more runs. They were not the first players to realise the front pad could protect the stumps as well as the shinbone, but the scale and exposure of their partnership legitimised a naked pragmatism that would become increasingly prevalent. The result was cricket’s dullest decade, the swingeing sixties, in which 47% of Tests were drawn.
Ramadhin bowled 98 overs in that second innings at Edgbaston, a Test record that will never be beaten, and was so tired afterwards that he fell asleep in the bath. He took only five wickets in the last four Tests of the series, which England won 3-0, and played his last Test in 1960 at the age of just 31. “When those fellas starting padding and padding and padding they broke me down a bit. They were kicking it, you know. Pushing forward and kicking it … they ruined my career.” Rob Smyth
Viv Richards
189* (170 balls, 220 minutes, 21 fours, 5 sixes)
England v West Indies, 1st ODI
Old Trafford, Manchester
May 1984
A rare victory over Clive Lloyd’s men looked distinctly possible when England reduced the Windies to 102-7 after 26 overs on a dry Old Trafford surface. Unfortunately for David Gower’s side, Viv Richards was still there. While that was the case, anything was possible. But no one expected what happened next.
Joined four short of his century by last man Michael Holding with the score on 166, Richards plundered 93 of the 106 runs scored in the final 14 overs. They came off just 57 balls.
This was a glimpse into the one-day future: a T20 fever dream. Or nightmare, in England’s case. Wherever they bowled, Viv dispatched the ball with brutal beauty, including a mighty stroke off Derek Pringle which flew out of the ground. His final score of 189 was an ODI record and would remain so for 13 years.
The Master Blaster rated it one of his best and those who saw the innings still discuss it with reverence similar to that with which old punks talk about The Clash and the Sex Pistols. A statement knock to open the ‘Blackwash’ summer, within two years Richards had the fastest Test hundred, too, another unbeaten effort against England, this time in his St John’s back yard. Steve Morgan
Brendon McCullum
158* (73 balls, 10 fours, 13 sixes)
Royal Challengers Bangalore v Kolkata Knight Riders, IPL
M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru
April 2008
Nobody knew what to expect. A shiny new 20-over tournament in cricket’s biggest market. Would it be the start of a revolution or merely a star-studded hit and giggle? On opening night, Brendon McCullum made sure it felt like both.
The Kiwi smashed a devastating unbeaten 158, bringing up his half-century from 32 deliveries, his hundred from 53 and his 150 from 70, flaying Zaheer Khan, Jacques Kallis and the rest of a stunned RCB attack.
His strokeplay was violent, nine of his sixes coming over mid-wicket as he scored 128 runs in boundaries. But it was a paddle sweep off Zaheer over fine-leg that drove home just how in control he was, a deft touch in contrast to the carnage that surrounded it.
“I was pretty nervous at the start,” McCullum revealed post-match. “It was partly because of the hype around the game and some of the big names in the side with huge records. I guess you want to prove yourself and that adds to the nerves.”
The following day, Mike Hussey powered his way to the IPL’s second century as Chennai Super Kings amassed 240. The biggest show in town had arrived, and there would be no stopping it. Adam Hopkins
Graham Yallop
102 (307 balls, 347 minutes, 8 fours)
Australia v England, 1st Test
The Gabba, Brisbane
December 1978
The Bridgetown crowd were so appalled by yellow-bellied Yallop that he was booed to the crease when he became the first batter to wear a helmet in Test cricket on Australia’s ’78 tour. Faced with a spicy pitch and the fearsome trio of Roberts, Croft and Garner, the Aussie left-hander donned a modified motorcycle helmet, inspired by Dennis Amiss who had done the same a year earlier in World Series Cricket.
A week later Yallop unwisely removed his lid for a tour match in Guyana and promptly suffered a double fracture of the jaw after being smashed in the face by Croft. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Handed the captaincy for the home Ashes later that year, Yallop became the second Australian to make a century in their maiden Test as skipper (after Greg Chappell) but, more significantly, the first player to make a Test hundred while wearing a helmet.
Head protection quickly became commonplace in the professional game and, as of 2023, it’s mandatory for batters to wear helmets when facing pace bowlers in international cricket. Jo Harman
You can read the full list of the 100 hundreds that changed the game in the latest issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly. Guardian readers can subscribe to the print magazine for just £3.67 per month and get their first issue for free. Click here for more details.
