W.G. Grace 268 vs North — Champion's Year, 1871

Grace had toured Australia briefly with George Parr's 1863-64 side as a young teenager and made his first hundred for Gentlemen v Players in 1866. By 1871 he was the obvious champion of English cricket.

South v North in mid-summer was a three-day fixture at the Oval before a large London crowd. Grace was the South's main draw.

Grace was 22 in the summer of 1871 and at the height of his early powers. The South v North fixture was one of the great representative matches of mid-Victorian cricket — effectively a national trial — and Grace scored 268 in his only innings. The next-highest score in the South total was 39. He went on to amass 2,739 first-class runs in the season at an average of 78.25; the second-highest season aggregate was Harry Jupp's 1,068, and the next-best average was Richard Daft's 39.57. Of the 17 first-class centuries scored in England in 1871, Grace made ten. No batsman would equal his statistical dominance again until Bradman. The 1871 summer was also marred for Grace by personal tragedy — his father Henry Mills Grace, the patriarch of the Grace family and the principal driver of his sons' cricket careers, died in December.

“Grace stands alone — there is nothing like him in the records, before or since.”

Grace passed 2,000 runs in a season again in 1873, 1875 and 1876. The 268 was beaten by his own 344 against Kent at Canterbury in 1876. The 1871 season established him as the runaway champion of English cricket and the only batsman whose presence guaranteed a gate.