A. E. J. Collins
Encyclopedia
Arthur Edward Jeune "James" Collins (18 August 1885 – 11 November 1914), typically now known by his initials A. E. J. Collins, was an English cricket
er and soldier
. He is most famous for achieving the highest-ever recorded score in cricket: as a 13-year-old schoolboy, he scored 628 not out over four afternoons in June 1899. Collins' record-making innings
drew a large crowd and increasing media interest; spectators at the Old Cliftonian
match being played nearby were drawn away to watch the junior school house
cricket match in which Collins was playing. Despite this achievement, Collins never played first-class cricket
.
Collins joined the British Army
in 1902. He studied at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, before becoming an officer
in the Royal Engineers
. He served in France during World War I, where he was killed in action in 1914 during the First Battle of Ypres
. Collins had been mentioned in dispatches and also represented the Royal Military Academy at cricket and rugby union
.
Collins was born in Hazaribagh
, India, to Arthur Herbert Collins, a judge in the Indian Civil Service, and Mrs Esther Ida Collins. Both of his parents had died by the time he began his education at Clifton College
, Bristol
, where he held a scholarship.
He joined Clifton College in September 1897, becoming a member of Clark's House
, although he later moved to North Town House. Clifton had an excellent reputation for sport. W.G. Grace scored 13 first-class centuries on the Close, and he sent his sons to the school. Collins played half-back for the rugby
XV, and was also in the cricket XI. He won a bronze medal
for boxing
at the public schools
tournament in Aldershot
in 1901, along with E. A. Hughes and H. P. Hewett.
Tim Rice
, in a 9 June 1999 article for The Telegraph
to celebrate the centenary of the score, entitled "On the seventh day AEJ Collins rested", described him thus:
on one side, while the other side was a gentle slope falling away towards the school sanatorium
in the distance. The pitch occupied the central 22 yards (20.1 m) of the narrow field, with the boundary only 17 yards (15.5 m) behind each set of stumps. Hits to the long boundary, down the slope, had to be all-run, but the three short boundaries only counted for two runs.
The match commenced on Thursday, 22 June, to take advantage of two half-day holidays while the college team played their annual match against Old Cliftonians nearby. Collins, a right-handed batsman, won the toss for Clarke's House and chose to bat first. Collins hit his first stroke at around 3.30 p.m. By the close of play at 6 p.m., he had scored 200 runs, having been dropped on 50, 100 and 140.
School lessons allowed another two-and-a-half hours' play on Friday, 23 June, and by then news of an exceptional innings had gone round the school. So brilliant was his play that even the crowd watching an Old Cliftonian match being played nearby lost its interest and a large crowd watched Collins' phenomenal performance. Collins' innings almost ended at 400 when an easy catch was dropped by the youngest player on the field, 11-year old Victor Fuller-Eberle, but at around 5.30 p.m., after batting for around five hours, rapturous applause broke out when he passed Andrew Stoddart
's world-record score of 485. At the end of the second day, he remained unbeaten on 509 and the team on 680 for 8. His innings was reported as a world record in The Times
newspaper on Saturday 24 June; the paper, however, gave Collins's score by the close of play on Friday as 501, his age as 14 and mis-reported his name as "A. E. G. Collins".
The match resumed in the lunch hour on Monday, 26 June, at 12:30 p.m., with a large crowd. By the end of play, Collins had been dropped again, on 556, to reach 598, but another wicket had fallen, and Collins was running out of partners. On Tuesday, 27 June, the school authorities extended the hours available for play in an attempt to finish the match. The crowds grew and media interest escalated, as The Times again reported on the match on Tuesday, and the disruption to school life was considerable. Collins hit out, with his approach being described as "downright reckless". He was dropped twice more, on 605 and 619. After just 25 minutes' play, Collins lost his final partner, Thomas Redfern, caught by Victor Fuller-Eberle at point
for 13, with Collins' score on 628. Collins had played less than seven hours' cricket, carrying his bat through his side's innings. He had scored 1 six, 4 fives, 31 fours, 33 threes, 146 twos and 87 singles. The Times once again ran a report, giving the final figures for Collins' innings in its Wednesday June 28 edition—once again, however, they misspelled his third initial.
North Town House, demoralised, were bowled out for 87 in 90 minutes on Tuesday. The match resumed on Wednesday 28 June, when North Town's second innings went even worse, making 61 in just over an hour, so Clarke House won by an innings and 688 runs. Collins showed some ability as an all-rounder
, with his right-arm medium pace bowling
taking 11 wicket
s for 63 runs
.
The scorebook hangs in the pavilion at Clifton to this day. The scorers faced a difficult task in accurately recording the innings. One of them, Edward Peglar, is said to have remarked that Collins's score was "628, plus or minus twenty shall we say". The other scorer for the match was J.W. Hall, whose father in 1868 had batted with Edward Tylecote
, who later played Test cricket
for England
and whose name is on a poem kept with the Ashes
urn. Tylecote had earlier set a world-record score of 404 not out in 1868, also at Clifton. Hall later wrote that "The bowling probably deserved all the lordly contempt with which Collins treated it, sending a considerable number of pulls full pitch over the fives courts into the swimming baths to the danger of the occupants."
Collins became public property for a long while after the match, forever associated with his great score. "Today all men speak of him," wrote one newspaper, "... he has a reputation as great as the most advertised soap: he will be immortalised." After leaving school, he never wanted to be reminded of his famous innings; nevertheless, he has been remembered well beyond his own lifetime.
Within two years, 31-year-old Australian Test cricketer Charles Eady
came close to breaking the record, when he made 566 for Break-o'-Day against Wellington in Hobart
in less than eight hours spread over three weeks in March 1902. This remains the closest challenge to Collins' record: only four other players, Dadabhoy Havewala (515), JC Sharp (505*), Malhotra Chamanlal (502 not out), and Brian Lara
(501*) have ever scored more than 500 runs in one innings in any form of cricket; Lara is the only person to have achieved a score of over 500 runs in first-class cricket
.
. He joined the British Army
the following year, being commissioned as a Second Lieutenant
in the Royal Engineers
on 21 December 1904. Despite the limitations on his sport that the military service caused, he played several matches for Old Cliftonians, his regiment, and the Army, remaining a free-hitting batsman. He played at Lord's
in 1913 for Royal Engineers against Royal Artillery
, scoring 58 and 36 runs in the two innings, but he never played first-class cricket
. He also joined Clifton Rugby Football Club
in February 1905, but never rose above the 2nd XV. He served with the 2nd Sappers and Miners in India, and was promoted to Lieutenant
on 23 June 1907.
He married Ethel Slater in the spring of 1914, and was sent to France when World War I
broke out later that year. He was killed in action, as a Captain, on 11 November 1914 at the First Battle of Ypres
, while serving with the 5th Field Company, Royal Engineers, at the age of 29. He was signalling for more men to protect the flank of his trench when he was killed; his body was dragged back into the trench by Sapper Farnfield (23900). The 5th Field Company carried out the burials of its Company on 12 November. Due to the continual fighting over this area for the next four years what remained of his grave and remains were never found, but his name is recorded at the Menin Gate
Memorial in Belgium
. Before his death, he had been Mentioned in Despatches. His younger brother Herbert (a Lieutenant in the 24th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment and also an old Cliftonian) was killed in action on 11 February 1917, aged 27. Collins's wife, Ethel, lived as a widow for over fifty years, dying on 1 September 1966 in Haslemere
.
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
er and soldier
British Armed Forces
The British Armed Forces are the armed forces of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.Also known as Her Majesty's Armed Forces and sometimes legally the Armed Forces of the Crown, the British Armed Forces encompasses three professional uniformed services, the Royal Navy, the...
. He is most famous for achieving the highest-ever recorded score in cricket: as a 13-year-old schoolboy, he scored 628 not out over four afternoons in June 1899. Collins' record-making innings
Innings
An inning, or innings, is a fixed-length segment of a game in any of a variety of sports – most notably cricket and baseball during which one team attempts to score while the other team attempts to prevent the first from scoring. In cricket, the term innings is both singular and plural and is...
drew a large crowd and increasing media interest; spectators at the Old Cliftonian
Clifton College
Clifton College is a co-educational independent school in Clifton, Bristol, England, founded in 1862. In its early years it was notable for emphasising science in the curriculum, and for being less concerned with social elitism, e.g. by admitting day-boys on equal terms and providing a dedicated...
match being played nearby were drawn away to watch the junior school house
House system
The house system is a traditional feature of British schools, and schools in the Commonwealth. Historically, it was associated with established public schools, where a 'house' refers to a boarding house or dormitory of a boarding school...
cricket match in which Collins was playing. Despite this achievement, Collins never played first-class cricket
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...
.
Collins joined the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
in 1902. He studied at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, before becoming an officer
Officer (armed forces)
An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...
in the Royal Engineers
Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....
. He served in France during World War I, where he was killed in action in 1914 during the First Battle of Ypres
First Battle of Ypres
The First Battle of Ypres, also called the First Battle of Flanders , was a First World War battle fought for the strategic town of Ypres in western Belgium...
. Collins had been mentioned in dispatches and also represented the Royal Military Academy at cricket and rugby union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
.
Early life and education
Hazaribagh
Hazaribagh is a city and a municipality in Hazaribagh district in the Indian state of Jharkhand. It is the divisional headquarters of North Chotanagpur division. It is famous as a health resort and for Hazaribagh National Park ....
, India, to Arthur Herbert Collins, a judge in the Indian Civil Service, and Mrs Esther Ida Collins. Both of his parents had died by the time he began his education at Clifton College
Clifton College
Clifton College is a co-educational independent school in Clifton, Bristol, England, founded in 1862. In its early years it was notable for emphasising science in the curriculum, and for being less concerned with social elitism, e.g. by admitting day-boys on equal terms and providing a dedicated...
, Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, where he held a scholarship.
He joined Clifton College in September 1897, becoming a member of Clark's House
House system
The house system is a traditional feature of British schools, and schools in the Commonwealth. Historically, it was associated with established public schools, where a 'house' refers to a boarding house or dormitory of a boarding school...
, although he later moved to North Town House. Clifton had an excellent reputation for sport. W.G. Grace scored 13 first-class centuries on the Close, and he sent his sons to the school. Collins played half-back for the rugby
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
XV, and was also in the cricket XI. He won a bronze medal
Bronze medal
A bronze medal is a medal awarded to the third place finisher of contests such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, etc. The practice of awarding bronze third place medals began at the 1904 Olympic Games in St...
for boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
at the public schools
Public School (UK)
A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...
tournament in Aldershot
Aldershot
Aldershot is a town in the English county of Hampshire, located on heathland about southwest of London. The town is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council...
in 1901, along with E. A. Hughes and H. P. Hewett.
Tim Rice
Tim Rice
Sir Timothy Miles Bindon "Tim" Rice is an British lyricist and author.An Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning lyricist, Rice is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus...
, in a 9 June 1999 article for The Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
to celebrate the centenary of the score, entitled "On the seventh day AEJ Collins rested", described him thus:
The famous match
In 1899, as a 13-year-old schoolboy, Collins scored the highest ever recorded cricket score of 628 not out. This feat took place during a junior school house cricket match between Clarke's House and North Town House. Such matches were timeless, played to a finish however long they took. The match was played on an outfield off Guthrie Road, Bristol, now named Collins' Piece. The ground had both a poor surface and a very unusual shape: it was very short (only 60 yards (54.9 m) long), with a wall only 70 yards (64 m) away forming the boundaryBoundary (cricket)
Boundary has two distinct meanings in the sport of cricket:# the edge or boundary of the playing field, and# a manner of scoring runs.-Edge of the field:...
on one side, while the other side was a gentle slope falling away towards the school sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
in the distance. The pitch occupied the central 22 yards (20.1 m) of the narrow field, with the boundary only 17 yards (15.5 m) behind each set of stumps. Hits to the long boundary, down the slope, had to be all-run, but the three short boundaries only counted for two runs.
School lessons allowed another two-and-a-half hours' play on Friday, 23 June, and by then news of an exceptional innings had gone round the school. So brilliant was his play that even the crowd watching an Old Cliftonian match being played nearby lost its interest and a large crowd watched Collins' phenomenal performance. Collins' innings almost ended at 400 when an easy catch was dropped by the youngest player on the field, 11-year old Victor Fuller-Eberle, but at around 5.30 p.m., after batting for around five hours, rapturous applause broke out when he passed Andrew Stoddart
Andrew Stoddart
Andrew Ernest Stoddart was an English cricketer and rugby union player. He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1893.-Cricket career:...
's world-record score of 485. At the end of the second day, he remained unbeaten on 509 and the team on 680 for 8. His innings was reported as a world record in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaper on Saturday 24 June; the paper, however, gave Collins's score by the close of play on Friday as 501, his age as 14 and mis-reported his name as "A. E. G. Collins".
The match resumed in the lunch hour on Monday, 26 June, at 12:30 p.m., with a large crowd. By the end of play, Collins had been dropped again, on 556, to reach 598, but another wicket had fallen, and Collins was running out of partners. On Tuesday, 27 June, the school authorities extended the hours available for play in an attempt to finish the match. The crowds grew and media interest escalated, as The Times again reported on the match on Tuesday, and the disruption to school life was considerable. Collins hit out, with his approach being described as "downright reckless". He was dropped twice more, on 605 and 619. After just 25 minutes' play, Collins lost his final partner, Thomas Redfern, caught by Victor Fuller-Eberle at point
Fielding (cricket)
Fielding in the sport of cricket is the action of fielders in collecting the ball after it is struck by the batsman, in such a way as to either limit the number of runs that the batsman scores or get the batsman out by catching the ball in flight or running the batsman out.Cricket fielding position...
for 13, with Collins' score on 628. Collins had played less than seven hours' cricket, carrying his bat through his side's innings. He had scored 1 six, 4 fives, 31 fours, 33 threes, 146 twos and 87 singles. The Times once again ran a report, giving the final figures for Collins' innings in its Wednesday June 28 edition—once again, however, they misspelled his third initial.
North Town House, demoralised, were bowled out for 87 in 90 minutes on Tuesday. The match resumed on Wednesday 28 June, when North Town's second innings went even worse, making 61 in just over an hour, so Clarke House won by an innings and 688 runs. Collins showed some ability as an all-rounder
All-rounder
An all-rounder is a cricketer who regularly performs well at both batting and bowling. Although all bowlers must bat and quite a few batsmen do bowl occasionally, most players are skilled in only one of the two disciplines and are considered specialists...
, with his right-arm medium pace bowling
Bowling (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, bowling is the action of propelling the ball toward the wicket defended by a batsman. A player skilled at bowling is called a bowler; a bowler who is also a competent batsman is known as an all-rounder...
taking 11 wicket
Wicket
In the sport of cricket the word wicket has several distinct meanings:-Definitions of wicket:Most of the time, the wicket is one of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at either end of the pitch...
s for 63 runs
Run (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, a run is the basic unit of scoring. Runs are scored by a batsman, and the aggregate of the scores of a team's batsmen constitutes the team's score. A batsman scoring 50 or 100 runs , or any higher multiple of 50 runs, is considered a particular achievement...
.
The scorebook hangs in the pavilion at Clifton to this day. The scorers faced a difficult task in accurately recording the innings. One of them, Edward Peglar, is said to have remarked that Collins's score was "628, plus or minus twenty shall we say". The other scorer for the match was J.W. Hall, whose father in 1868 had batted with Edward Tylecote
Edward Tylecote
Edward Ferdinando Sutton Tylecote - cricketer....
, who later played Test cricket
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
for England
English cricket team
The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...
and whose name is on a poem kept with the Ashes
The Ashes
The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. It is one of the most celebrated rivalries in international cricket and dates back to 1882. It is currently played biennially, alternately in the United Kingdom and Australia. Cricket being a summer sport, and the venues...
urn. Tylecote had earlier set a world-record score of 404 not out in 1868, also at Clifton. Hall later wrote that "The bowling probably deserved all the lordly contempt with which Collins treated it, sending a considerable number of pulls full pitch over the fives courts into the swimming baths to the danger of the occupants."
Collins became public property for a long while after the match, forever associated with his great score. "Today all men speak of him," wrote one newspaper, "... he has a reputation as great as the most advertised soap: he will be immortalised." After leaving school, he never wanted to be reminded of his famous innings; nevertheless, he has been remembered well beyond his own lifetime.
Within two years, 31-year-old Australian Test cricketer Charles Eady
Charles Eady
Charles John Eady was a cricketer who played for Tasmanian clubs and representative sides in the era before Tasmania was accepted into the Sheffield Shield and other competitions...
came close to breaking the record, when he made 566 for Break-o'-Day against Wellington in Hobart
Hobart
Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...
in less than eight hours spread over three weeks in March 1902. This remains the closest challenge to Collins' record: only four other players, Dadabhoy Havewala (515), JC Sharp (505*), Malhotra Chamanlal (502 not out), and Brian Lara
Brian Lara
Brian Charles Lara, TC, OCC, AM is a former West Indian international cricket player. Lara is generally regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time...
(501*) have ever scored more than 500 runs in one innings in any form of cricket; Lara is the only person to have achieved a score of over 500 runs in first-class cricket
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...
.
Military career
Collins chose to follow an army career, passing his entrance exams to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in September 1901 and representing the Royal Military Academy at both football and rugby as well as cricket, scoring a century in a match against SandhurstRoyal Military Academy Sandhurst
The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , commonly known simply as Sandhurst, is a British Army officer initial training centre located in Sandhurst, Berkshire, England...
. He joined the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
the following year, being commissioned as a Second Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.- United Kingdom and Commonwealth :The rank second lieutenant was introduced throughout the British Army in 1871 to replace the rank of ensign , although it had long been used in the Royal Artillery, Royal...
in the Royal Engineers
Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....
on 21 December 1904. Despite the limitations on his sport that the military service caused, he played several matches for Old Cliftonians, his regiment, and the Army, remaining a free-hitting batsman. He played at Lord's
Lord's Cricket Ground
Lord's Cricket Ground is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and Wales Cricket Board , the European Cricket Council and, until August 2005, the...
in 1913 for Royal Engineers against Royal Artillery
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
, scoring 58 and 36 runs in the two innings, but he never played first-class cricket
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...
. He also joined Clifton Rugby Football Club
Clifton Rugby Football Club
Clifton Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club founded in Clifton, Bristol, England. Over the years the club's home games have been played in a variety of locations in northern Bristol, though never in Clifton itself; since 1976 they have been based at the southern end of Cribbs Causeway.Clifton...
in February 1905, but never rose above the 2nd XV. He served with the 2nd Sappers and Miners in India, and was promoted to Lieutenant
First Lieutenant
First lieutenant is a military rank and, in some forces, an appointment.The rank of lieutenant has different meanings in different military formations , but the majority of cases it is common for it to be sub-divided into a senior and junior rank...
on 23 June 1907.
He married Ethel Slater in the spring of 1914, and was sent to France when World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
broke out later that year. He was killed in action, as a Captain, on 11 November 1914 at the First Battle of Ypres
First Battle of Ypres
The First Battle of Ypres, also called the First Battle of Flanders , was a First World War battle fought for the strategic town of Ypres in western Belgium...
, while serving with the 5th Field Company, Royal Engineers, at the age of 29. He was signalling for more men to protect the flank of his trench when he was killed; his body was dragged back into the trench by Sapper Farnfield (23900). The 5th Field Company carried out the burials of its Company on 12 November. Due to the continual fighting over this area for the next four years what remained of his grave and remains were never found, but his name is recorded at the Menin Gate
Menin Gate
The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing is a war memorial in Ypres, Belgium dedicated to the commemoration of British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres Salient of the First World War and whose graves are unknown...
Memorial in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
. Before his death, he had been Mentioned in Despatches. His younger brother Herbert (a Lieutenant in the 24th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment and also an old Cliftonian) was killed in action on 11 February 1917, aged 27. Collins's wife, Ethel, lived as a widow for over fifty years, dying on 1 September 1966 in Haslemere
Haslemere
Haslemere is a town in Surrey, England, close to the border with both Hampshire and West Sussex. The major road between London and Portsmouth, the A3, lies to the west, and a branch of the River Wey to the south. Haslemere is approximately south-west of Guildford.Haslemere is surrounded by hills,...
.
External links
- A. E. J. Collins from Cricket Archive
- Video of Collins'piece; the eponymous field where the score was achieved