page_title: Len Hutton
section_title: Series against South Africa and West Indies
hierarchical_section_title: Len Hutton / Career after the war / Series against South Africa and West Indies
caption_attribution_description: English: Len Hutton practising at Melbourne
context_page_description: Sir Leonard Hutton was an English cricketer who played as an opening batsman for Yorkshire County Cricket Club from 1934 to 1955 and for England in 79 Test matches between 1937 and 1955. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack described him as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He set a record in 1938 for the highest individual innings in a Test match in only his sixth Test appearance, scoring 364 runs against Australia, a milestone that stood for nearly 20 years. Following the Second World War, he was the mainstay of England's batting. In 1952, he became the first professional cricketer of the 20th Century to captain England in Tests; under his captaincy England won the Ashes the following year for the first time in 19 years.
  Marked out as a potential star from his teenage years, Hutton made his debut for Yorkshire in 1934 and quickly established himself at county level. By 1937, he was playing for England and when the war interrupted his career in 1939, critics regarded him as one of the leading batsmen in the country, and even the world. During the war, he received a serious injury to his arm while taking part in a commando training course.
context_section_description: Hutton's tonsils were removed before the start of the 1947 season but his poor health continued, forcing him to miss some games at the start of the season. Nevertheless, his form remained good and he scored four centuries in early matches. Yorkshire dropped to equal seventh in the County Championship, affected by the retirement of key players and the frequent loss of Hutton to representative cricket. In the Test matches Hutton did not initially score heavily. His highest innings after three Tests was only 24 runs, and critics called his place into question. He returned to form during the fourth Test, his first at Headingley, with a four-and-a-half-hour century on a difficult pitch for batting. Hutton scored 83 and 36 in the drawn final Test, and England won the series 3–0 with the other two games drawn. Hutton hit 344 runs in the Test series at an average of 44.00; in all first-class matches, he scored eleven centuries and totalled 2,585 runs at an average 64.62, although his achievements that season were overshadowed by those of Denis Compton and Bill Edrich, who both broke the previous record for most runs scored in a season.
  After 16 months of continuous cricket, Hutton chose to miss the 1947–48 winter MCC tour of the West Indies. However, injuries severely affected that team, and its captain Gubby Allen requested reinforcements. Subsequently, Hutton flew out to join the tour; Immediately after he arrived, having travelled for four days, Hutton played against British Guiana, scoring 138 and 62 not out, before appearing in the third Test. After a century against Jamaica, Hutton played innings of 56 and 60 in the fourth and final Test, giving him 171 runs at an average of 42.75 in the series. He came top of the first-class averages for the tourists, with 578 runs at an average of 64.22, and was judged by Wisden as one of the few batting successes in a team which lost the four-Test series 2–0 and failed to win a single match on tour.
caption: Hutton in 1947
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