A Wisden Cricketer of the Year, twice: The 1925 summer that saw Jack Hobbs achieve a rare honour

The mood around The Oval was at fever pitch. From early in the morning huge queues had formed, the numbers swelling as people arrived by tram, Tube and bus in the hope of witnessing history. According to the Evening Standard, “at nine o’clock the crowds were such that it was all the ordinary police force could do to keep them in control and on the pavements”. Once the turnstiles opened, “there was terrific excitement, and at one time it seemed as if the gates must be rushed”. By the start of play, the ground was packed with more than 31,000 spectators.

Remarkably, the occasion for this outpouring of passion was not the climax of the Ashes but a Championship fixture between Surrey and Nottinghamshire in early August 1925. That summer, the imagination of the British public was gripped by the impending coronation of a new batsman as cricket’s greatest centurion.

The record – 126 – was held by WG Grace but, after a magnificent tour of Australia and an explosive start to the season, Jack Hobbs had the title in sight. Though 42, he was in the form of his life, playing with a fluid ease and confidence that cemented his reputation as the best batsman in the world. “There is no stopping Jack Hobbs now,” proclaimed the Daily Mirror, after he reached his 12th century of the summer, against Kent at Blackheath on July 20. It took him within one of equalling Grace.

Today, a hundred years after his journey to the summit, it would be unthinkable for a Championship match to fill The Oval. But county cricket was part of the social fabric, its importance enhanced by the paucity of international fixtures: in five summers in the 1920s, there were no Tests at all. Cricket, not football, was the national sport, and the leading players major stars.

Hobbs was the brightest in the firmament, venerated not only for the grandeur of his batting, but also the dignified charm of his personality. In his restrained decency, he embodied the high ethical standards cricket was meant to uphold. A devout Christian, loyal husband to Ada, and good father to his four children, he helped raise the status of professional players through the example of his own conduct. His England colleague Harold Larwood said he was “incapable of anything paltry or mean”.

But Hobbs was no ascetic. In the achievement of respectability, he showed a keen sense of his own worth. He was born into poverty in Cambridge, his father a poorly paid college servant and cricket coach. The eldest of 12, young Jack had been employed in domestic service and as an errand boy for a local bakery, before he became an apprentice gas fitter. His experience of hardship left deep psychological scars. “I detested the back road where we lived, and I envied those who had big houses and could hold their heads up in any company,” he wrote. “Certainly, I had the inferiority complex to a marked degree.”

This feeling made Hobbs determined to gain financial security. By 1925, his prowess at the crease had enabled him to do precisely that. The previous season, he had signed a five-year contract with Surrey that gave him a basic income of £440 a year, while bonuses and fees for Test appearances brought his annual earnings from cricket to £780. He had other sources of money, including a successful sports equipment shop in Fleet Street, ghosted books and articles, and an impressive range of sponsorship deals that featured armchairs, fountain pens, tailored suits, breakfast cereals, cigarettes and pain-relief tablets. At a time when the average salary of a GP was £1,000, Hobbs was making over £1,500 a year.

Before the First World War, he had been something of a cavalier, renowned for his attacking instincts. “He was a mighty proposition in those days,” wrote Frank Woolley. “He seemed at his best to have two strokes and plenty of time for every ball.” After the war, his strokeplay was less exuberant, but he grew even more dominant: records tumbled, and public adulation intensified. His secret, thought Patsy Hendren, lay in an “extraordinary gift for judging the flight and length of the ball sooner than anyone I know”. In the first three months of the 1925 season, Hobbs lived up to his sobriquet – The Master. On good pitches under blue skies, he piled up the runs in his graceful, assured style. Nor was there any sign of ageing: “I was actually fitter and in better health than I had been for some time.”

One aspect of the unfolding drama that puzzled him was the focus on equalling, not beating, Grace. “To me, the 127th century was – and is – the more important,” he later said in a radio interview. But that was not the prevailing view: parity with Grace was what mattered. Most of the country seemed to be willing him towards that goal and, as expectation mounted, Hobbs came under a level of scrutiny no British sportsman had ever known. In Grace’s heyday, there were no mass-circulation newspapers, no cinema newsreels, no radio broadcasts; by 1925, all had become major cultural forces. Indeed, each of the four leading dailies – the Mail, Express, Mirror and Herald – sold more than a million, while Britain had over two million radios and more than 4,000 cinemas.

The media attention imposed a unique strain. “I felt that every eye in England was focused on me, and I began to get harassed,” wrote Hobbs. After scoring the 125th century at Blackheath, he travelled to Hove for Surrey’s fixture against Sussex, only to find himself accompanied by a large press pack and a film crew making a documentary. Even when he reached the sanctuary of his hotel room, his phone kept ringing with requests for interviews and photographs, one from a female journalist who wanted a picture of him in his swimming costume on Brighton beach. (He declined.)

When Surrey batted, he was dismissed for one in his only innings. It marked the beginning of a dramatic change in form: for the first, and last, time in his career, he buckled under stress. His touch deserted him, his strokeplay grew awkward. Even when he made a start, he could not go on. Against Kent at home he scored 22, then 52 and 38 at Gloucester. Back at The Oval for the game against Nottinghamshire, the public’s fixation with the record reached a new intensity. But, once again, spectators were disappointed: Hobbs fell for 54 and one, caught behind off Larwood. It was the same pattern in the next game, at home to Middlesex, in front of another enormous crowd. “No one seemed to care what the result of the match was to be,” reported the Sunday Mirror. “Only Hobbs mattered. Every run he made was greeted with a roar.” But, to the anguish of the multitude, he was caught down the leg side for 49. That evening, newspaper placards appeared across London: “Hobbs Fails Again”. He followed that with 31 in a rain-affected match against Leicestershire. Altogether, in nine innings since Blackheath, he had made just 252 runs.

Normally so placid, Hobbs hinted at frustration when he told an interviewer he felt “a little tired of cricket”, and that his form earlier in the season had made “a rod for my own back”. The public were also beginning to feel exasperated and exhausted, but that only heightened the anticipation as Surrey went to Taunton. On a bright, sunny Saturday morning – August 15 – at yet another packed ground, Somerset’s captain Jack White chose to bat. When they were bowled out before tea for 167, Hobbs had more than two hours, and probably at least 40 overs, to reach his target – easily attainable in his best form.

But the greatest obstacle was his own tension. “Great player though he was, he was obviously very anxious,” recalled Raymond Robertson-Glasgow, who opened the Somerset bowling with Jim Bridges. Hobbs was caught at cover point off a no-ball, gave difficult chances to mid-on and the wicketkeeper, survived a close call for lbw, and could have been run out twice. Somehow, he reached stumps on 91.

Sunday was a rest day and, apart from two visits to church, Hobbs stayed quietly in his hotel. But he was all too aware of the renewed excitement, as journalists and spectators flooded to Taunton. Describing the atmosphere as “electric”, the Daily Mirror commented that “seldom in the history of the game have nine runs been awaited with such keen interest”. On the Monday morning, the Great Western Railway put on special trains from Paddington, which led to a queue more than half a mile long outside the ground, and a start delayed by 25 minutes. Once the 10,000 capacity had been reached, the authorities closed the gates.

All this made Hobbs more fidgety. “The poor fellow was worried to death,” said Surrey wicketkeeper Herbert Strudwick. Once he reached the middle, however, he was calmer, picking up three singles, then pulling a long hop from Robertson-Glasgow for four, to move to 98. Despite this blow, he was dissatisfied with his bat, and there was another slight delay as a new one was summoned. The interruption further cranked up the tension and, when Hobbs went to 99 with another single, the crowd fell silent.

It was approaching noon when the moment of destiny arrived, Hobbs pushing a delivery from Bridges past short leg, and prompting what Wisden called “tremendous cheering”. The Almanack went on: “So pronounced was the enthusiasm that the progress of the game was halted for some minutes, while at the end of the over all the players in the field shook hands with Hobbs.” The Surrey captain, Percy Fender, who came on to the field with a goblet of ginger ale and, amid more cheering, the teetotal Hobbs modestly raised it to the crowd. More privately, he took from his pocket a message that he asked the groundsman to have telegrammed to Ada, on holiday in Margate with their children. It could not have been simpler: “Got it at last – Jack.”

The relief contained in those words was palpable. Liberated from his statistical manacles, he scored a hundred in the second innings, this time playing with “serene abandon”, to use Robertson-Glasgow’s phrase. Finally the undisputed champion of century-makers, he climbed to new heights of esteem. Telegrams flooded into the Surrey offices; even King George V, famous for his reticence, sent a letter of congratulation. For weeks the press had been his tormentors. Now they were his cheerleaders, calling him “the superman of cricket”. The impact was felt internationally: The New York Times reported that people “are naming babies after him all over Britain”, while in parts of India the Muslim population reacted with outrage at a syndicated cartoon that showed Hobbs on a pedestal, towering over Caesar, Napoleon and the Prophet Muhammad.

Hobbs set another record that summer by taking his aggregate of hundreds to 16. In 1926, Wisden made him their only Cricketer of the Year, despite his having been one of the Five in 1909. He carried on playing for England until 1930, and for Surrey until 1934, when he was 51. No one will ever approach his totals of first-class runs (61,760) or centuries (199). In retirement, he became the first professional cricketer to be knighted. After his death in 1963, the reverence for him grew; Wisden named him one of their Five Cricketers of the Century. To this day, The Master’s Club meets every year at The Oval on Hobbs’s birthday, December 16, to enjoy his favourite lunch: tomato soup, roast lamb and apple pie.

Back in 1925, the Almanack had described him as “one of the greatest figures in cricket history. A masterly batsman under all conditions, possessed of exceptional grace of style, remarkable in his variety of strokes.” It was a verdict that has triumphantly stood the test of time.

Belfast-born historian and journalist Leo McKinstry has written biographies of Geoffrey Boycott and Jack Hobbs. His life of Bill Edrich was published by Bloomsbury in 2024.

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