The fastest scorers ever?
John Ferguson on Warwick Armstrong's proto-Bazballers
Has there ever been a team which has scored at such speed as Armstrong’s 1921 Australians?
Sydney Smith gives some interesting statistics. In all matches in Great Britain (except the extra at Whitehaven), they averaged 84.60 runs per hour: 16,191 runs in 190 hours and 58 minutes. He does not give the figures in relation to overs. If my count is right 3,942.5 were bowled at them, giving a scoring rate of 4.1 per over or nearly 0.7 per ball.
The rate for Test matches was down to 66 an hour and 3.4 per over, but this included the monumental rearguard action at Manchester—in all 175 in 5 hours 18 minutes or 116.4 overs (a remarkable over rate but Douglas, the only fast bowler, scarcely bowled). Omitting this, the rate becomes 74 per hour, or 3.8 per over. There was a remarkable succession of matches after the second Test:
v. Hampshire: 708 for 7 in 368 minutes
v. Surrey: 213 in 178 minutes, and 158 in 164 minutes
v. Northamptonshire: 621 in 355 minutes
v. Nottinghamshire: 675 in 340 minutes
v. Warwickshire: 506 in 283 minutes.
This makes an average of more than 100 an hour through five first-class matches—or, if we omit the lapse at The Oval, 112 an hour!
At Southampton, Bardsley and Macartney put on 167 for the second wicket in 81 minutes, Bardsley and Taylor 124 for the fourth in 60 minutes, and Taylor and Armstrong 101 for the fifth in 51 minutes.
At Northampton, Andrews and Macartney added 185 for the second in 92 minutes, and Gregory and Armstrong 101 for the seventh, in 49 minutes.
At Nottingham, Macartney and Taylor added 128 for the third in 51 minutes, and Macartney and Pellew actually put on 291 for the fourth in 107 minutes.
At Birmingham, Armstrong and Oldfield added 116 for the ninth wicket in sixty minutes, and Oldfield and Mailey 124 for the tenth in 44 minutes, so that the last two wickets put on 240 in 104 minutes—something like 137 runs per hour.
There was a similar scoring spree in Scotland, although the opposition was less strong. In three matches the Australian totals were 540 in 299 minutes, 422 in 241 minutes, and 514 in 259 minutes—in all 1,203 in 799 minutes, an average of just over ninety an hour.
Even more remarkable is the fact that no individual batsman in the whole party averaged less than thirty runs an hour. Collins, the slowest, went at 32.51.
One of Sydney Smith’s most delectable comments relates to a match in South Africa on the return journey: “Collins plodded along … having put together 203 without a blemish in 244 minutes”.
Macartney, the fastest scorer, averaged 53.41 per hour. This was the year of his famous innings at Nottingham—345 in 232 minutes—when, after reaching his 200 in 143 minutes, he thought he would take a heavier bat “to have a dip at the bowling”…
This article first appeared in The Cricket Statistician for May 1974. To join the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, and subscribe to the journal, please visit our website: