Arthur Fagg

Who was Arthur Fagg?

Arthur Edward Fagg was an English cricketer, who played for Kent and England.

A right-handed opening batsman who first played for Kent at the age of 17, Fagg was a Test match player at 21 against India in 1936. But he caught rheumatic fever on the tour of Australia the following winter, and missed the whole of the 1937 season.

The evidence was strong in 1938 that Fagg was back to his best form. He set a first-class world record playing for Kent against Essex at Colchester, scoring 244 in the first innings and an undefeated 202 in the second innings in a drawn match, becoming the only batsman in first-class cricket history to score double centuries in both innings of a match. But 1938 was a year of record-breaking, and the young Leonard Hutton cemented his place as England's first choice opener with his 364 against the Australians at The Oval.

Fagg played only one more Test, though he remained a consistent scorer in county cricket until the mid-1950s. In all, he scored 58 centuries and more than 25,000 runs.

After retirement, he became a well-known cricket umpire, officiating in eighteen Test matches and seven One Day Internationals. He created a sensation at Edgbaston in 1973, by refusing to take the field after the West Indies team disputed one of his decisions.