LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

116 Tour Manager and Law 26 whole proceedings. Fortunately, Peebles was present to take care of his friend: He was much troubled by high blood pressure at this moment and easily upset, and I was much concerned for him. Knowing him so well I felt I could help, so I asked him to come and have a walk with me, at which we spent about twenty minutes pacing up and down behind the stand. I repeated my arguments, and said that he had himself been largely responsible for the tremendous success of the trip, and it would be foolish and unnecessary to throw away the victory which would crown their efforts, the more so as it was against long odds when they had set out. All this gave him time to breathe, and presently I was able to tell him to take a couple of his pills and rejoice, which he did. Swanton ended his story of the tour with a few words about Robbie’s management skills: ‘The modern tour by an MCC team needs in its management a combination of strong discipline, cricket knowledge and background, and a sense of the importance of Press (i.e. public) relations. Walter Robins had a liberal supply of all three of these attributes.’ Wisden later recorded: ‘Under the wise management of R.W.V.Robins, the players developed a tremendous spirit and team-work and determination to avoid defeat carried them through to their triumph.’ And one player in particular was more than happy with his methods: When touring abroad it is very important that the captain and the manager are in agreement and get on with each other because they are the most important of the personalities, the manager in particular. The first thing the manager has got to do, is to gain the confidence of his players and very quickly care about their welfare. I toured on four different occasions, twice to the West Indies and twice to Australia, and I would say without hesitation that a man called R.W.V.Robins, a man a lot of players didn’t seem to like, was quite easily the best manager. You could talk to him, you could put your grievances to him and he was a willing listener. In fact he used to come to my bedroom every morning, sit in a chair and talk to me for at least half-an-hour about the conditions, and what we were trying to do and what we weren’t trying to do that day. That player was Freddie Trueman. Trueman headed the Test bowling averages during the 1959/60 tour of the West Indies, taking twice as many wickets, 21, as the next highest wicket-taker, Statham, and bowling more overs than any other bowler. He also headed the bowling averages for all first-class games on the tour, took the most wickets, 37, and, apart from Illingworth, bowled the most overs. It seems that Robbie’s special attention to the team’s main strike bowler paid dividends. * * * * * * * In 1959, Robbie attended the annual Imperial Cricket Conference in London, as joint Australian delegate with Ben Barnett, the pre-war Australian Test wicketkeeper who had settled in England and was a close friend of the Robins family. After the meeting Robbie had written to