Today, we have two of Hampshire’s finest batsmen from the first half of the last century, Phil Mead and Neville Rogers.
Left-handed batsman Phil Mead was born in Battersea 9.3.1887 and moved from Surrey to Hampshire still in his teens after his contract was not renewed. He holds a number of remarkable records which because of significant changes in English county cricket will never be matched.
In 700 first-class matches for Hampshire he scored 48,892 runs (at 48.84), more runs than any other batsman has ever scored for any single first-class side, anywhere in the world. That came about partly because, in a career that ran from a single match in 1905, to the end of the 1936 season, he played in just 17 Test Matches, and only two of them were in England. They were against the Australians in the final two Test Matches of the 1921 series, which were drawn, despite which Australia won the series 3-0, and Mead, only batting twice, scored 47 and 182*.
So, his Test batting average in England was 229.00, yet in a further 15 seasons he was never selected again in England, leaving many county summers in which to score those many runs for Hampshire. In all Tests, he scored 1,185 runs at a fraction under 50 per innings, with four centuries and three half-centuries.
On debut, in his single match in 1905 he scored 41* v the Australians. Having qualified by residence, he played regularly from 1906 and in the next 27 seasons, he went past 1,000 runs every season, in eleven of those he passed 2,000 and while he never reached 3,000 runs in a season for Hampshire, he did so in all first-class cricket in 1921 - that Test year - when he also recorded his best score of 280* in a defeat v Nottinghamshire – and in 1928.
In all first-class cricket his 153 centuries place him fourth in the all-time records, again unlikely to be matched, and his total of 138 centuries for Hampshire is more than twice the number by the next in the list,
Other records included being the first of just two Hampshire batsmen to score a double and single century in the same match; on four occasions, he scored three consecutive centuries, and on three occasions when opening, he carried his bat. At various times in his career, he held Hampshire’s partnership records for the second, third, fourth, eighth and ninth wickets and he shared a three-figure partnership for every Hampshire wicket, and with a century v Derbyshire in 1932, completed centuries against all the other county sides.
In addition, he held 633 catches, more than anyone for Hampshire, and having started his career, as a slow-left-arm bowler, took 266 wickets for the county. He retired after the 1936 season but played for Suffolk in 1938 & 1939 and was their leading batsman in both seasons.
After the war, he retired to Hampshire and would visit the cricket but his eyesight had deteriorated rapidly and he was blind for the last ten years of his life. He was made an honorary life member of MCC and in later years at Northlands Road, Hampshire created a new stand in his honour.
John Arlott (1957) said of him that “he had a defence which must challenge comparison with that of any player” and that among the cricketers of his time, Mead might be seen as “more nearly approaching the impossible batting standards of infallibility than any other player except Jack Hobbs”. He died in Boscombe, 26.3.1958.
Neville Rogers was born in Cowley, Oxford 1918, and came to Hampshire in 1939 as a promising 21-year-old, to spend a year qualifying by residence. Because of the war, he did not play first-class cricket until 1946, age 28, when on debut, he scored 90 v Worcestershire at Portsmouth.
Until the availability of Roy Marshall in 1955, Rogers was the cornerstone of the inconsistent Hampshire batting, and while he was selected as twelfth man for England, and played in Test Trials he probably sacrificed aspects of his game to suit the needs of his team and never played at the higher level.
John Arlott (1956) described him as “something near to being a master craftsman of defensive batting”. From 1947 he passed 1,000 runs in nine consecutive seasons, before an offer of employment led to his retirement after the 1955 season when he captained the side for the final five matches, winning four with one drawn, as Hampshire finished third for the first time.
His best year was 1952, with over 2,000 runs, and there were 26 centuries in those last nine seasons. In 1954 he carried his bat twice for Hampshire and also for MCC v Surrey, and for an England XI v the Pakistanis at Hastings, setting an English record of four in one season. After retiring, he played in Southampton with Trojans CC, and in the 1990s, worked alongside his friend Jimmy Gray who was then Hampshire’s Cricket Chairman.
On Rogers’ retirement, Arlott described him as “among the county’s greatest players”. He died in Southampton 7.10.2003.
Also today: Malcolm Heath, James Wooton
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