Jack Hobbs scored 199 first-class centuries, yet nobody noticed him as a teenager
No cricketer has made more first-class runs or hundreds than Jack Hobbs: 61,760 runs and 199 centuries. Yet as a Cambridge teenager he was an apprentice gas fitter whom no coach approached. One improved season in 1901, a famous mentor and a family tragedy set him on the path to becoming The Master.
Hobbs was born in Cambridge on 16 December 1882, eldest of twelve children of a slater who turned professional cricketer and became groundsman at Jesus College. The family was poor. Young Jack played in the street and on Parker's Piece, a common in the city, was a weak pupil but a keen sportsman, and after leaving school in 1895 worked as an errand boy, a college servant and then a trainee gas fitter. His batting was better than most locals' but unremarkable.
It clicked in 1901, when he hit his first century, 102 for a local club. In August 1902 he earned ten shillings for his first professional game and made 119; a week later his father died of pneumonia, leaving the family in hardship. A friend of his father wrote to Essex, which never answered, and then asked Tom Hayward, the Cambridge-born Surrey star, to watch the youngster bat. Hayward was impressed, and in 1903 Surrey took Hobbs on at 30 shillings a week. Qualification rules meant two years of living in the county before he could play.
His Surrey debut came on 24 April 1905, with a brisk 88 in the second innings; in the next match he hit 155 against Essex and was capped on the spot. He made his England debut in 1908 with 83, and his mastery of South African googly bowling secured his place. By 1911-12 critics considered him the best batsman in the world. Appendicitis cost him most of 1921, after which he played more cautiously and, if anything, more consistently.
Footwork, range and placement were his strengths, and he thrived on difficult pitches. His Test opening partnership with Herbert Sutcliffe still had the best average in Test history as of 2022. He played 61 Tests, ran a sporting goods shop from 1921, and in 1953 became the first professional cricketer knighted. Wisden later named him one of its five Cricketers of the Century. He died in 1963, a few months after Ada, his wife of 56 years.
Source: Jack Hobbs
