Preceded by David Gower, Steve Waugh, and Allan Border but with Steven Smith closing in on all of them, it is now time to look at the two leading scorers of all time in Ashes tests.
Jack Hobbs (England 1908-30)
Jack Hobbs’ England career spanned 22 years on either side of the First World War, when Test cricket stopped. “The Master” leads, to this day, the runs and centuries tallies in First-class cricket, with 61,237 runs and 199 centuries. He was the first professional cricketer to be knighted.
Hobbs was known for his ability to play all types of bowlers in any variety of conditions, combining classical play with effective defence. He played 41 Ashes Tests, amassing 3,636 runs, with 12 hundreds and 15 fifties.
Don Bradman Australia (1928-48)
It will be no surprise to any student of the game of cricket that Don Bradman is the most successful batter in Ashes history. Like Hobbs, his Test career was interrupted by war, and it is hard to imagine what his statistics might have been without it.
As it is his record will probably never be beaten – 37 matches and 63 innings against England yielded 5,026 runs at 89.76. That included 19 hundreds and 12 fifties, with his highest 334, at the time a world record, scored at Headingley, Leeds in 1930. That also saw him become the only man in Test history to score more than 300 runs in a single day.
Four years later, he returned to the same ground and made 304 to become the only man to make two Ashes triple-centuries (there have only been five in all).
Bradman is the only player in history to have scored more than 5,000 runs against one opponent. Unfortunately for the English, it happened to be them.