Is This the Shortest Ever School Cricket Match?

The sport of cricket is notorious for discussions over obscure statistics and records, ranging from the longest, to the shortest and endless variables in between. However, when you explore the ‘records’ beyond international and county cricket level it becomes incredibly difficult to verify as the scorecards do not exist. In a school match played in India, Pranav Dhanaward scored 1009 runs from just 327 balls. This is a remarkable score, but we cannot be 100% certain that it is a record. There might be another teenager out there somewhere who scored 1010!

What does this have to do with Emanuel School? John Sullivan (OE1947-57) who played in an incredibly short school match got in touch as he was interested in exploring whether this was a record of some type.  Historically, The Portcullis only provides full statistics of First XI cricket fixtures and we are therefore fortunate that the magazine verifies John’s 1953 recollection, in which the Colts XI (usually an U15 or U16 team, or a mix of both) defeated Alleyn’s in a mere three balls! The exact quote notes:

 “Much of their hard work will be rewarded in the future, but the immediate fruits were realised this year when the U15s beat Epsom, Eltham, Reading and finally—by the margin of 10 wickets – Alleyn’s (Alleyn’s, 9 all out: School, 10 for 0… in three balls).

This match was over so quickly a bathroom break might have meant a spectator missing Emanuel bat and getting confused on their return! The fixture was so one-sided there was also probably no need to ‘break for tea’! What we do not know is the number of balls it took Alleyn’s to accumulate their nine runs, as there are examples of many teams being bowled out for similar scores, or much lower. All it takes is a very strong bowler to skittle a team and their score would be very low. For example, in the nineties an Emanuel U12 team were bowled out by Tiffin for twelve and in a non-Emanuel fixture, Glastonbury posted eighty and then bowled Langport out for nought.

Obviously, it is impossible to verify this as a record, but winning a match in a mere three balls is incredibly rare and can only be bettered by wins in either one or two balls. Sadly, the school does not seem to have a photo of this particular cricket team, but John does feature in many others including tennis and cross-country.

John recalled that Mr Pearce (who taught English) was the coach and that Emanuel had two great bowlers in John Woods (swing bowler) and Stephen Snelling. John continued; “Emanuel ‘skittled them out’ for nine runs of which five were extras, four byes and a wide. Pearce always had John batting first. He scored ten runs in three balls to win the match – four off the first ball, two off the second ball and four off the third.”

John Sullivan