LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

134 Final Years limited-overs cricket over the years shows how right he was, and although it would take nearly another forty years, the introduction and huge success of Twenty20 tournaments is the latest proof of his vision of the future for that form of cricket which always, weather permitting, produced a result. But his hopes for a more positive approach to first-class cricket were never fully realised. Setting an example with his creative declarations was generally viewed as merely another demonstration of his boundless over-confidence and not to be taken seriously. Reducing the number of overs allowed in each team’s first innings found many supporters when half of all county cricket matches were failing to produce a result. Robbie believed 85 overs were more than enough and even proposed bringing this down to 65. Such restrictions were considered a step too far but, in response to falling over-rates which reduced the prospects for a result, the authorities were forced to demand that a minimum number of overs had to be bowled during each day. But that still did not guarantee a result which for Robbie was always the point of every game, at whatever level it was being played. However, not everyone could see the benefits of ‘brighter cricket’. Out of the blue, Robbie was shocked to receive a letter in 1967 from Ted Dexter accompanied by a copy of his new autobiography, Dexter Declares . In the letter he wrote: I am sending you a copy of my book before publication which I hope you enjoy reading as an entity. I do so because in my efforts to point out how severely English Cricket has been and still is affected by the whole ‘brighter cricket’ bogy, I find on re-reading, that I have been more personal about you in your time as chairman of selectors, than was perhaps necessary to make the point. I hope you can feel that, even if the point has been poorly or inadequately made, it is a genuine attempt to clear the game of ‘brighter’ cricket, so as to allow brighter cricketers, who need no encouraging, to flourish. I think I have accepted blame myself in full measure for those unsettled, though not wholly unsuccessful, times. I would love to have them over again. In his attack on the campaign for brighter cricket, Dexter admitted that initially he was a supporter of Robbie’s determination to bring crowds back into cricket grounds by ensuring that matches were played out by all players on both sides intending to achieve a result, win or lose, rather than avoid defeat: ‘We both had dreams of what cricket could and should be and I was too young to know better.’ He went on to suggest that Robbie had unrealistic expectations of commitment from players to play with enterprise from start to finish: ‘There was a splendid dream going the rounds, the dream of a series of spell-binding cut-and-thrust games of cricket with everyone playing the game openly, hitting the ball gloriously and all the rest of it.’ Robbie’s refused to be drawn into an exchange of views on the way cricket should be played and his reply to Dexter’s letter was a masterpiece of restraint: At tuppence a page I think your book is good value for money, but after