The Window
Each month, Gideon Haigh writes about a favourite photograph of his from cricket’s past
Charles Hewitt/Getty images
A smartening of the attire
Gideon Haigh
Walter Hammond, Ashley Down Ground, Bristol, 1946
Walter Hammond is the subject of one of cricket’s most cherished photographs – the definitive cover drive, captured by Herbert Fishwick at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1928. Eighteen years later, when Charles Hewitt took this photograph of him in Bristol, he was still England’s best batsman, proving it that same day with 26 fours in a six-hour 241 for Gloucestershire against Somerset, and averaging 84 in the first-class season. He was, wrote his first biographer Ronald Mason, “apparently untouched by time… subduing with royal ease the normal difficulties”.