Famous Cricketers No 39 - D.C.S.Compton

run in the final Test at Kennington Oval whereby England regained the Ashes after nineteen years. His seasonal record came to 1659 runs. In the following winter Compton made his first visit to the West Indies, under the captaincy of Leonard Hutton. He performed well enough in the five Tests scoring 348 runs at an average of 49.71. The series proved to be a somewhat turbulent one with matters off the field dominating events. The series was drawn, England coming back well after losing the first two games of the rubber by large margins of runs. Compton’s domestic season of 1954 was curtailed by his recurring knee problems. He did however make a magnificent 278 in the Trent Bridge match against Test newcomers Pakistan. He did not play any matches after the final Test of the summer at Kennington Oval as he underwent major surgery which necessitated him flying out late to join the England team in Australia. The flight was not without drama as his plane had to crash land at Karachi. He played in the match at Adelaide and scored a fine hundred. This was followed by another century in the state match against Queensland. His jinx of four years previously seemed to have returned when he damaged his hand, breaking the metacarpal bone on his fourth finger which became trapped in the white picket fencing as he endeavoured to pull himself to his feet after he had slipped trying to stop a boundary hit. Batting almost one-handed at no. 10 and no. 11 in the two innings he managed just two runs. The rubber was won most convincingly by England by three matches to one with excellent performances coming from May and Cowdrey and inspired bowling from England’s newest fast bowling discovery Frank Tyson, ably backed by the ever consistent Brian Statham. The return of the South Africans again, their third visit in eight years to England, gave Compton a chance to recover some of his best form. He played in all five Test matches of the summer and scored 492 runs, the highlight being an innings of 158 at Old Trafford. Injury again dogged Denis’s season in 1956 and he did not make his first appearance until the last day of June. After a good innings of 61 for Middlesex against the Australians at Lord’s he was eventually recalled to the England Test team for the final Test of the rubber at Kennington Oval. The selectors completed a remarkable hat trick of bringing back the right players. Cyril Washbrook, David Sheppard and then Denis Compton all justified their selection by making good scores; Denis’s 94 was a most courageous innings in what proved to be his last Test in England. His selection for the ensuing tour of South Africa in the 1956/57 winter was perhaps made more on sentimental grounds as by now he had slowed up considerably in the field and could not play the dashing strokes of his golden prime years. He did play in all the Tests but only managed to score two fifties with the somewhat low average of 242 runs for 24.20. He returned to England to play in what turned out to be his last full season in the first-class game. He managed to score over 1500 runs with three hundreds. Having turned forty years of age early in the following season he restricted himself to just three Championship games for Middlesex and one festival match, at Hastings. Thereafter his career consisted of three more games in England, in 1959, 1963 and 1964, a Commonwealth tour to South Africa in the 1959/60 season and a Cavalier’s tour of Jamaica in 1963/64. Compton had become a columist for The Sunday Express in 1950, and joined the B.B.C. as a television commentator in 1958. He was awarded the C.B.E. in 1958 for services to cricket. His second marriage ended in 1968 on account of his wife’s desertion. He married, for the third time, in 1975 Christine Franklin Tobias. There were two daughters of this union, Charlotte Joanna, born 1977 7