A.C.MacLaren – Justice Denied

Martin Chandler | 8:56am BST 21 April 2024

Published: 1996
Pages: 22
Author: Rosenwater, Irving
Publisher: Private
Rating: 3.5 stars

In 1895 Lancashire’s future England captain, the 23 year old Archie MacLaren, scored 424 against Somerset. It was the first quadruple century in First Class cricket and remained the only one until 1923 when Bill Ponsford, a 22 year old Australian playing for Victoria against Tasmania at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in just his third First Class match, made 429 out of an innings total of 1,059.

Wisden duly recorded the new record but MacLaren, by now in his early fifties and a man with a large personality, was not happy, and he entered into correspondence with the then editor of Wisden, Sydney Pardon, objecting to the inclusion of Ponsford’s innings in the records section of the ‘Cricketers’ Bible’.

The centrepiece of this particular monograph is the letters that MacLaren sent, and both are reproduced in full. MacLaren did have some grounds for complaint. The Victorian side was very much a second team and the Tasmanians, who lost the match by an innings and 666 runs, were not a strong side. On the other hand the fixture was a long-running one, and the previous encounters had always been considered First Class.

Rosenwater, in the way that only he can, gives a throughly researched and objective account of both sides of the argument and, whilst having sympathy with MacLaren, he concludes that Preston, and the man who looked after the records section, the noted historian FS Ashley-Cooper, had little choice but to treat the Ponsford innings as First Class

And then of course the issue, as Rosenwater points out, became academic five years later when Ponsford raised the bar once again by scoring 437 against Queensland, a Sheffield Shield match, and unarguably First Class.