Compton's 3,816 Runs and 18 Hundreds — The 1947 Record Summer

Compton had served in India during the war with the Bombay Sappers and Miners, leaving him short of first-class cricket between 1939 and 1946. The 1947 summer was his first full English season since the age of 21. Edrich was an RAF Distinguished Flying Cross holder. Both had returned to Lord's for 1946 but only fully clicked in 1947.

The summer of 1947 was statistically the driest and sunniest in England since records began in 1659, with Lord's enjoying day after day of cloudless heat. Wisden noted that the conditions produced the flattest set of county wickets seen since the late 1920s. Compton said publicly in May 1947 that he simply 'felt good'.

Compton broke Tom Hayward's 1906 record of 3,518 runs in a season and his 13 centuries in mid-August. He finished with 3,816 runs in 50 innings (8 not out) at an average of 90.85 with 18 centuries, and bowled 635.4 overs of left-arm wrist-spin for 73 wickets. Edrich, opening the batting at the other end, made 3,539 with 12 hundreds.

The Test series against South Africa was the showpiece. At Lord's in the second Test, Compton (208) and Edrich (189) put on 370 for the third wicket — at the time the world record for that wicket — in 320 minutes; both passed 1,000 Test runs in 1947 alone. Compton's series tally of 753 runs at 94.12 with 4 centuries set the England record for runs in a home series. He made another four centuries against the South Africans in tour matches, taking his series total against the tourists to over 1,180 runs.

Compton's batting was uniquely improvised — the sweep, the late cut, the sweep against pace — and made possible by the driest, sunniest English summer in living memory, which produced consistently flat batting wickets. He was simultaneously playing left-wing for Arsenal and helped them win the Football League title in 1947-48 before his cricket knee finally forced him to give up football.

“Compton's record-breaking summer of 1947 will almost certainly never be equalled, and certainly never beaten.”

“Denis Compton in 1947 played the kind of cricket the country wanted to read about over its breakfast: a small light against the gloom of austerity.”

Compton was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year alongside Edrich for the 1948 edition; the two men shared the Father Time wall photo at Lord's in perpetuity. Compton played another decade for England but the 1947 summer remained the peak — by the early 1950s a worsening knee injury and a switch from football began to slow him.

The 753 Test runs in a home series stood as an England record until Wally Hammond's pre-war numbers were re-examined; in modern reckoning it is the most runs by an England batsman in a home Ashes-or-equivalent series.