A very funny thing I noticed recently. In the 20th century, from 1 January 1900 to 31 December 1999.
Compton's retirement series in South Africa is the lowest scoring series in South Africa, in that entire century, The batting average in that series is quite literally 19.69, the second lowest scoring is 21.44 in 1905. You have to go to Heorge Lohmann era to find lower scoring series in South Africa, and that was largely because of poor batting units. Even pre-war matting wicket serieses were higher scoring than the 1957 England in South Africa series.
Barrington's series in South Africa is the exact opposite, It's the second highest scoring series in South Africa, in the entire century, infact only one series is above it with 44.86 batting average, the 1938 South Africa series where England almost chased down 700+, the batting average for this series was 42.98, the third highest scoring series bin South Africa for the first 125 years of Cricket was at 34.13, showing just how much of an outlier those two tours were compared to conventional South African wickets.
Basically, Compton's final tour came in one of the lowest scoring serieses in history and Barrington's saffer tour came in one of the highest scoring, yet Barrington fans would pretend it's the same thing because the country is calked South Africa.
