England were 48 for five when Gilbert Jessop got to the middle, 215 runs behind. The pitch was tricky, soft, and pitted from where they had been playing on it after the rain, and Australia’s spinners, Hugh Trumble and Jack Saunders, had swept through the best of the batting, Archie MacLaren for two, Johnny Tyldesley for a duck, Lionel Palairet for six, three wickets for 10 runs in as many minutes, then Tom Hayward and Len Braund, both caught behind in single figures. The bookmakers chalked up odds of 50-1 against on the blackboards around the ground. And here’s Jessop. “I bet you don’t make a century,” MacLaren told him as he walked out. “Done.”
You should know this story by now, or at least, over a century later, have an idea how it plays out. “‘Jessop’s in,’” wrote a journalist under the byline A Country Vicar, “the words caused a shiver of excitement, a cold sensation down the spine.” You can feel a little of it now just reading about it.
