by Abhishek Mukherjee

1914.

Despite it being evident that the County Championship could not continue, MCC refused to call it off. They eventually had to the a decision probably hastened by WG Grace's famous letter to The Sportsman.

At tea on September 2 at Hove, on the final day of the match, they decided to call off Yorkshire versus Sussex – and cricket for the summer. Surrey was named champion.

The Golden Age of Cricket came to an end.

Hobbs scored the 2,697 runs (2,499 in the Championship) in that incomplete season. Here he was at Bradford, in the early summer, taking on Major Booth (his name was Major) and Alonzo Drake – both of whom would perform miracles in the last days of pre-War cricket – and Hirst and Rhodes.

At this point Hobbs was arguably the best batsman in the world, definitely in England. On this day he slammed a 75-minute 100 with 11 fours and 5 sixes. The second fifty took him just 25 minutes.

One of these sixes, off Drake, was hit straight, very straight – so straight that it smashed the glass of the pavilion clock.

One might have used "Hobbs made time stop" – a phrase that would not have been lost on The Master.

But The Master had gone a step ahead by turning the hour hand back.

Drake's response was all Yorkshire: "Tha' should have knocked her to half-past six and we’d have been rid of thee!" The reference was to the scheduled time for stumps.

Unfortunately, even Hobbs failed to stop time long enough to prevent the years of atrocities that followed.

It happened on 25 May 1914. Perhaps apocryphal. Perhaps not.