The Demon demolishes England

All Today's Yesterdays - August 29 down the years

August 28 | August 30

1882
The climax of one of the most famous Test matches of all time, the one that gave birth to The Ashes. Set only 85 to win at The Oval, England were 51 for 2 before WG Grace was out. After that, the wiles of Fred Spofforth bowled Australia to an amazing win by seven runs. "The Demon" took 7 for 46 and 7 for 44, and a mock obituary of English cricket appeared in The Sporting Times.

1985
Graham Gooch (196) and his captain David Gower (157) completed a sumptuous stand of 351 against Australia. England's innings win put the seal on a glorious summer for Gower, who scored 732 runs in the series, which England won 3-1 to regain the Ashes. Those two centuries were the last for England in an Ashes Test at The Oval until Mark Ramprakash in 2001.

1906
A top allrounder put in one of the top allround performances. Yorkshire's George Hirst hit 111 and 117 not out and took 6 for 70 and 5 for 45 against Somerset at Bath. At the end of the season, in which he scored 2000 runs and took 200 wickets, he had every reason to say that if anyone ever matched the feat (they haven't) "he'll be tired."

1977
Malcolm Nash improved on his performance against Garry Sobers. Relatively speaking, that is. In 1968, batting for Notts against Glamorgan at Swansea, Sobers hit Nash for six sixes in an over, the first batsman to achieve this feat in first-class cricket. Now, on the same ground, Lancashire's Frank Hayes settled for a four from the second ball of a Nash over - but smashed the rest for six. Poor Malcolm is the only bowler to concede 36 and 34 runs off separate overs.

1842
Birth of England medium-pacer Alfred Shaw, who bowled the first ball in a Test match, at Melbourne in 1876-77. His second ball was hit by Charles Bannerman for the first run in Test cricket. Shaw conceded only 51 runs from 55.3 four-ball overs in the first innings. One of the greatest bowlers of his type, Shaw's 2075 first-class wickets cost only 12.00 each. When he died in 1907, he was buried according to his wishes: the length of a cricket pitch from the grave of his equally celebrated Notts and England team-mate Arthur Shrewsbury. Some time after the interment, someone discovered that the distance between the two tombs wasn't 22 yards but 27. Shock, horror. Luckily the county secretary remembered that Shaw always took a five-yard run-up!

1910
One of Shaw's team-mates died. Allen Hill not only played in that inaugural Test, he was the first bowler to take a wicket in a Test match, bowling Nat Thomson for a single. Hill's entire Test career consisted of the two matches in this 1876-77 series. His medium-paced seamers brought him seven wickets at only 18.57 and he made 101 runs at an average of 50.50. He was at the crease when England hit the winning runs in the second Test.

Other birthdays
1857 Sandford Schultz (England)
1913 Leonard Butterfield (New Zealand)
1923 Hiralal Gaekwad (India)
1934 John Guy (New Zealand)
1980 Mohammad Sheikh (Kenya)