We tracked down Gilbert Jessop's family... and they never want his record broken

Telegraph

3 days ago

Last summer, two teenagers were taken to Gloucestershire County Cricket Club's museum. There, they were shown one of the most famous pieces of cricket memorabilia: the bat that Gilbert Jessop used to score England's fastest Test century, in 1902.
The man is their great-grandfather.
'They were very proud,' says their mother, Lucy, who is Gilbert's granddaughter. 'We have a picture of Gilbert in my hallway, so he's always around in our household. They know all about their great-grandfather.'
At The Oval 123 years ago, Jessop scored England's fastest Test century. For the bulk of England's 1,014 Tests since, Jessop's record was a matter of arcane trivia; but since 2022, and the start of the Bazball regime, it has been a perpetual source of fascination.
Lucy, Gilbert's closest living relative, has no desire for the family to relinquish the record.
'I'd quite like him to keep it,' Lucy says. 'It seems amazing. There's been over 1,000 England Tests, and it still hasn't been broken. I think he would be astonished that that has happened.
'It is nice that his memory is kept alive by people nearly getting there, but not quite.'
Since 2022, 10 England centuries have come in 100 balls or fewer. Yet Jessop's 76 balls remains the magical figure, listed in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack and widely accepted by statisticians.
Perhaps no longer. A new book – Chasing Jessop: The Mystery of England Cricket's Oldest Record – argues that Jessop is even harder to topple.
Piecing together the innings ball-by-ball with contemporary sources, as best possible, Simon Wilde finds that Jessop's century actually arrived in 72-74 balls. At the same time, Wilde finds that Jessop's hundred might have taken a little longer than widely accepted: 80 minutes, not 75. Journalists at the time seemingly agreed upon the 75-minute figure because it sold the story of Jessop's innings as vividly as possible.
Not that Jessop's innings needs any embellishment. On August 13, 1902, Jessop arrived at the crease with England 48 for five in pursuit of 263 on a green pitch at The Oval. The bookmakers at the ground judged England's chances at 50-1, which was probably overly generous.
For Jessop – nicknamed 'The Croucher', for how low he bent in the crease, and described as possessing 'a barrel of a chest' – the natural response to England's plight was to attack audaciously and embrace the air.
Jessop thrashed Hugh Trumble, Australia's off-spinner, straight into the Oval pavilion on three occasions. These blows only earned four runs: at the time, batsmen had to literally hit the ball out of the ground to score six.
'The only man living who could beat us, beat us,' Trumble said after England's one-wicket victory. Jessop's innings was the golden hour of cricket's Golden Age.
'He was very much for taking risks,' Lucy reflects. 'Sometimes he would be out quickly, and other times it would massively pay off.'
Jack Hobbs said that Jessop was an even greater draw for spectators than Don Bradman. While Bradman scored runs in industrial quantities, the allure of Jessop was that his innings balanced ferocious hitting with a sense of fragility. 'The man who hits,' Jessop wrote in 1899, 'always possesses one consoling thought in success or failure, that with him goes the sympathy of the great majority of spectators.'
Lucy has taken a very different path. Like Gilbert's father, she trained as a doctor, moving to Ireland to be a public health consultant. It is a job that, I suggest, requires a very different attitude to risk to Jessop's on a cricket field.
'I suppose so, yes,' Lucy says with a smile. 'Sport was never my particular strong suit.'
Lucy has still followed Gilbert in some respects. Both went to the same college at Cambridge University, Christ's. While Gilbert studied theology, Lucy studied medicine. As a student, Lucy occasionally saw mentions of her grandfather.
Gilbert died in 1955, 20 years before his only grandchild was born. But tales of his character were still passed down to Lucy by her father.
'He seemed to be a humble and kind man, and people enjoyed meeting him. We heard stories of when he moved to Dorchester to live with my father in his later years, he would offer tips to the local boys practising in the cricket nets at Fordington vicarage. He enjoyed the fact that cricket was carrying on through the generations. I think he'd be delighted that cricket is still popular, still making headlines.'
Despite her own modest interest in the game, Lucy was always aware of her family's remarkable contribution to English cricket history.
'In my childhood home there were many pictures and books on cricket and my grandfather in particular. Cricket was always there. And I always knew about my grandfather.'
Lucy's father, who was also called Gilbert, played briefly for Hampshire and was a fine minor counties player. In Dublin, where she moved six years ago, her own son plays at school.
Since England's embrace of Bazball, Gilbert has gone from being a historic figure belonging to another age to more relevant than ever. Few Tests pass without his name flashing up on Sky Sports, atop a list of the fastest England centuries in Test history. Friends alert her whenever her grandfather's record is in danger.
'When people were getting very close to his record it suddenly put him back in the spotlight. Serious cricket fans would probably have known about him long before, but he obviously came back more into the limelight recently.'
On a training course in England, Lucy met another Dr Jessop. 'He was delighted to learn of my surname and he said to me: 'Oh yes, everyone always used to wonder if I was any good at cricket, and was I related to the great man.'
'I said: 'Well, actually, I'm his granddaughter.' He was amazed to finally meet a relative of the great Gilbert.'
Gilbert, Lucy is sure, would have relished England's approach under Ben Stokes.
'It would have been very exciting for him. I like the fact that he had his own style, and he kept to his own style. Most people, if you're being taught how to do something, you have to do it in the classic way that everybody had learnt. My grandfather said: 'No, this is the way I'm going to stand, this is what I'm going to do. He made it work for him.''