Sam Northeast enters a top ten that fate could have made look very different

Until Sam Northeast strode to the crease against Leicestershire, only one Glamorgan player had ever scored a triple century

Sam Northeast 410*

Steve James held the club record with 309*, which had been rattled up at Colwyn Bay against Sussex at the start of this century. 

But Northeast passed that by a country mile with his 410* and in the process, entered not only the Glamorgan record books, but also the top ten First Class scores of all time. You would expect that a score of such magnitude would contribute to a win and so it proved for Glamorgan against Leicestershire, but in a most extraordinary manner.

Leicestershire batting first, had rattled up a sizable 584, so after the Northeast powered Glamorgan reply of 795/5 dec, everything pointed to a draw, until Leicestershire collapsed to 183 all out in under sixty overs to hand Glamorgan a win by 28 runs. 

Northeast oblivious of other records

Sam claims he wasn’t aware of other records, except that of Steve James, although bringing up his four hundred with a six suggests he knew given the state of the game, he needed to crack on. If, Glamorgan had been content to think of a draw, then Brian Lara’s 501* could well have been in danger, but cricket is a team game and with even the merest sniff of victory’s scent, David Lloyd, Glamorgan’s captain had to declare on Sam, leaving Lara, Hanif Mohammad, Don Bradman, BB Nimbalkar, Bill Ponsford (twice), Aftab Baloch and Archie McClaren ahead of him. 

Good luck and bad luck can be a double-sided coin. Just ask wicketkeeper Chris Scott. Or rather don’t, because he fears his phone ringing to discuss his dropping of Lara. A claim to fame that Chris could live without. It was a regulation catch, but down it went and on went Lara to his record. Scott at the time had said “I’ll bet he goes on to get a 100 now”. If only just that Chris!

Comparing the Greats of County: Lara, Bradman and Hanif 

Lara’s record might not have existed, or would at least have needed to be more than his 501*, had Hanif Mohammad not been run out on 499 for Karachi v Bahawalpur in 1959. Hanif had already passed Don Bradman’s 452 for Queensland, set in 1930 and one might assume that a run out could easily have been daft rather than unlucky. However, it was an errant scoreboard and somewhere a scorer (who’s good fortune is that posterity seems to have no record of their name) that did for Hanif. 

With 2 balls of the day to go Hanif had reached 498, but the ground scoreboard had not updated, and showed 496 instead. On the basis of this dodgy data, Hanif played the penultimate ball of the day past point, and after completing the first run, decided to go for the second, intending to keep strike and was run out by a yard.  

Bad luck indeed, but not as tragically unlucky as his strike partner, Abdul Aziz, who was hit by a rising delivery a week later. He succumbed to the injury and unfortunately passed away, and was marked “absent dead” in the second innings.

Northeast after his record breaking 410*

Nimbalkar just out of reach

Batting for Maharashtra v Kathiawar in 1948, BB Nimbalkar was well aware that he had Bradman’s then record 452* in his sights. So was opposing captain, His Highness the Thakur Sahib of Rajkot, who it seems wasn’t a man of good grace. 

So little grace, in fact, that with Nimbalkar on 443* he gave his opponents an ultimatum – “declare or he and his side would go home”. Knowing that history was in Nimbalkar’s grasp they declined and off went his Highness and his Kathiawar charges to catch the train home leaving Nimbalkar stranded.  

The Don did at least send Nimbalkar a congratulatory note, no doubt feeling magnanimous with his record safely intact. 

So well done Sam Northeast. Brian Lara is still the top first class run scorer ever. But history could so easily have been different.