LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

22 that follow athletics with interest and zeal are pleased that it was to Queens that he came. It is not given to many to collect a soccer ‘blue’ and a cricket ‘blue’ in their first year.’ This was followed by a description of a reclusive student with characteristics every reader would have known were exactly the opposite of the Robbie they had encountered: ‘So shy was he that in his first term he was hardly known by sight to most people in College, except perhaps those freshers that lived near him, and to the small select band of constant chapel-goers.’ The next amusing exaggeration was, in fact, much closer to a realistic survey of Robbie’s many activities: ‘So numerous are his many clubs that he can easily do a week without wearing the same tie twice, but while pride of place goes to the Quidnuncs, “Corinth” is well up for second place.’ The ‘Quidnuncs’ was the club for university cricketers, while ‘Corinth’ was for players of association football and both would obviously have occupied much of Robbie’s time. He would have accepted invitations to join other clubs of a less sporting nature but the author could not resist the opportunity to emphasise the passion of this allround sportsman for games of all types with the report that ‘Robbie is a good billiards player, and is understood to have a season ticket at a certain local billiard saloon.’ And it seems that he had not lost his love of singing, first discovered in church and school choirs in Stafford and developed at Highgate before he arrived at Cambridge, as the article was delighted to report: ‘Everyone in College must be familiar with his ringing tenor voice, so often raised in praise of his favourite flower, the tulip.’ The tulip in question was a reference to a public house, the Rose and Tulip, an undergraduate haunt that once existed in nearby St Andrew’s Court. Leaving behind student in-jokes and leg-pulling for the Easter break, Robbie headed immediately for the Faulkner Cricket School. He was determined to spend hours working on his batting technique but also on finding and developing a method of bowling that would turn him into a genuine allrounder. He loved fielding and was proud to be considered one of the best but, being the player he was, he disliked being on the outside looking in while others were having a direct impact on the progress of the game by bowling and taking wickets. E.M.Wellings says that, in batting practice at the school, Faulkner tried to reduce Robbie’s unusually high backlift by wedging a plank in the netting at an appropriate height, but his habit was so ingrained it had little effect. The season did not start well. The University team had lost three of its five main bowlers from the previous summer and the new captain Eddie Dawson was hoping that Robbie would step up and take over one of the vacant slots. In the first game at Fenner’s against Yorkshire he bowled one over that went for ten runs and during the next four games he bowled 71 overs while taking only three wickets and conceding 245 runs. However, the situation was about to change dramatically. The University’s leading batsman, K.S.Duleepsinhji, who had begun the season with 101 against Yorkshire and an unbeaten 254 against Middlesex, a Fenner’s record, in only four hours, was taken ill and would not return that summer. He had been laid low with such a severe case of pneumonia that Cambridge and Aubrey Faulkner