| "A Century Maker" Hutchings as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, August 1907 |
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| Personal information | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Kenneth Lotherington Hutchings | |||
| Born | 7 December 1882 Southborough, Kent, England |
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| Died | 3 September 1916 (aged 33) Ginchy, France |
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| Batting style | Right-handed | |||
| Bowling style | Right arm fast | |||
| International information | ||||
| National side | England | |||
| Test debut (cap 155) | 13 December 1907 v Australia | |||
| Last Test | 11 August 1909 v Australia | |||
| Domestic team information | ||||
| Years | Team | |||
| 1902 – 1912 | Kent | |||
| Career statistics | ||||
| Competition | Test | First-class | ||
| Matches | 7 | 207 | ||
| Runs scored | 341 | 10,054 | ||
| Batting average | 28.41 | 33.62 | ||
| 100s/50s | 1/1 | 22/56 | ||
| Top score | 126 | 176 | ||
| Balls bowled | 90 | 1,439 | ||
| Wickets | 1 | 24 | ||
| Bowling average | 81.00 | 39.08 | ||
| 5 wickets in innings | – | 0 | ||
| 10 wickets in match | – | 0 | ||
| Best bowling | 1/5 | 4/15 | ||
| Catches/stumpings | 9/– | 179/– | ||
| Source: Cricinfo, 29 December 2008 | ||||
Kenneth Lotherington Hutchings (born 7 December 1882 in Southborough, Kent, and killed in action on 3 September 1916 in Ginchy, France) was a cricketer who played for Kent and England.
Regarded as the most graceful English batsman of the so-called "Golden Age" of English cricket before the First World War, Hutchings was a member of the Kent team that won the County Championship in 1906, 1909 and 1910. He played just seven Test matches for England, with a highest score of 126 at Melbourne on the 1907/08 tour of Australia. In that innings, he reached his hundred in 126 minutes, his second fifty taking only 51 minutes.[1]
A. A. Thomson wrote of him: "Though a crabbed unemotional Northerner, I sometimes think that if one last fragment of cricket had to be preserved, as though in amber, it should be a glimpse of K. L. Hutchings cover-driving under a summer heaven."[2] According to David Denton and George Hirst, he hit the ball harder than any other player of their time (and they were contemporaries of Jessop).[3] He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1907.