Len Hutton - Gerald Howat

Cricket fans everywhere will know of Len Hutton [1916-90] who as an opening batsman, enjoyed a stellar career with Yorkshire and England before and after the Second World War. Born into a family of cricketers in Fulneck, near Bradford, Hutton played the game as a schoolboy and joined Pudsey St Lawrence CC as a junior member, aged 12. He soon became established at the club and by the time he reached his 16th birthday, he was a regular first team player. As Hutton's reputation grew he was introduced into County cricket with Yorkshire where he began quietly in the second team. His early experiences added to coaching from Yorkshire's staff brought Hutton, aged 20, into Yorkshire's first team as the County's opening batsman. Never flamboyant but always defensively sound, Hutton was one of the best batsmen in the world and in 1938 at the Oval, showed his brilliance in the last Test of an Ashes series. His score of 364 was a monumental achievement and remained the highest Test innings for twenty years. When serving in the Army in the Second World War, Hutton fractured his left arm in an accident in a gymnasium. The injury never healed properly and despite several operations, the arm settled at about two inches shorter than his right arm. Despite the injury Hutton returned to First Class cricket where his Test and County career culminated in his appointment as captain of England, the first modern professional cricketer to achieve that honour. After victory in the Ashes series of 1953, Hutton took a young party to Australia to defend them and, with the help of the devastating pace attack of Tyson and Statham, emerged victorious. Hutton retired in 1956 and was knighted in the same year. This excellent biography was written with the full cooperation of the subject and is now reissued with more illustrations, to commemorate the centenary of Len Hutton's birth.