During 1960’s New Zealand were not a strong team. Especially their bowling was quite mediocre in those pre-Hadlee days. In 1965, the New Zealand team toured England for a three test series. They lost the first two tests and came to Leeds to play the third test.
England brought in the Surrey opener John Edrich for the third test. Edrich played last of his 8 tests against Australia at Old Trafford a year back with moderate success. Now he got a chance to establish himself as Geoff Boycott decided to take rest once England were 2-0 up. The left-hander was in good form in the county cricket and was confident of a good showing. Also his Surrey teammate Ken Barrington was also picked in the eleven in place of Ted Dexter.
On 8th July, England won the toss and Edrich came out to open. Soon he was joined by Barrington as the other opener Bob Barber was dismissed by Bruce Taylor. Thus started a long partnership between two Surrey batting mainstay. Edrich was the more attacking among the duo and kept hitting boundaries at will. Barrington played the supporting role as Edrich reached hundred and then 150 with a wide range of shots. A couple of his strong drives also went over the boundary. By the end of day one, England were 366/1 with Edrich on 194 and Barrington on 152. For New Zealand Dick Motz, Richard Collinge and Taylor tried their best but could not stop the flow of runs.
Edrich continued on next day, 9th July 1965. Barrington was dismissed when Edrich was in 199 but he duly completed his 200 and despite losing Colin Cowdrey early he continued to play his shots. He added 109 runs with Peter Parfitt who contributed just 32. Finally, with his 50th four, he reached the 300 mark and became the 4th English batsmen and 8th overall to reach the fit. However he finished with 52 fours and 5 sixes which is still a record for the highest number of boundaries in an innings and also the contribution of the boundary, a whopping 76.77% still remained a record. England declared at 546 for 4 once his triple hundred was reached.
It ended in an easy win for England as New Zealand scored just 359 runs in their two innings, only 49 more than Edrich and lost by an innings to lose the series 0-3. However, John Edrich took himself to record books and went on to play 77 test matches for England till 1976.
