It had been thought that both of his parents had died by the time he began his education at Clifton College, Bristol, where he held a scholarship.

[4] 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:[3] He was an orphan whose guardians lived in Tavistock, Devon.

[10] Collins's 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 pm, after batting for around five hours, rapturous applause broke out when he passed Andrew Stoddart's world-record score of 485.

[3] 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.

The crowds grew and media interest escalated, as The Times again reported on the match on Tuesday,[12] and the disruption to school life was considerable.

[10] The Times once again ran a report, giving the final figures for Collins's innings in its Wednesday edition of 28 June—once again, however, they misspelled his third initial.

Collins showed ability as an all-rounder, with his right-arm medium pace bowling taking 11 wickets for 63 runs.

[3] 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.

[3] 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.

[15][16][17] 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.

[7][19][20] Only five other players, Prithvi Shaw (546), Dadabhoy Havewala (515), JC Sharp (505 not out), Malhotra Chamanlal (502 not out), and Brian Lara (501 not out) have ever scored more than 500 runs in one innings in any form of cricket.

[21] He joined the British Army the following year, being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 21 December 1904.

[22] 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.

[3] He was killed in action on 11 November 1914 at the First Battle of Ypres, while serving as a captain with the 5th Field Company, Royal Engineers, at the age of 29.

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.