LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

28 until they moved down to Bristol to face Gloucestershire again, where he bowled Hammond for a rare duck while taking a few more wickets. It was the breakthrough he needed and for the rest of August he continued to feature among the leading wicket-takers in the Middlesex attack, including the scalp of Jack Hobbs at Kennington Oval and at Lord’s. His batting also improved now that he was going in regularly at fifth wicket down and he passed 1,000 runs for the season against Warwickshire at Lord’s. The 1928/29 football season would see the Corinthians reach the fourth round of the FA Cup for the second time in three years and the club scored over 100 goals. The team was so strong that Robbie was chosen for only seven matches. But when the Easter holidays arrived he was asked to join the Corinthian party for a short tour in France, playing in Paris and Cannes. * * * * * * * Abandoning his short-lived teaching career at Stanmore after incurring the displeasure of his employers by appearing at morning school with his gown over his dinner jacket, dress shirt, waistcoat and bow-tie, Robbie had nearly a month to prepare in the nets at Lord’s for the start of the 1929 season. He was delighted to find that Ian Peebles was waiting for him there. Although it had been agreed in 1928 that Peebles could occasionally take time off work to leave Nottingham and play first-class cricket in the south, he had found it difficult to serve two masters and, after three appearances for Middlesex in May and June, had decided to concentrate on his new employment for the rest of the summer. It didn’t work out and Peebles admitted: ‘I still yearned to play first-class cricket.’ He handed in his notice, then went home to Scotland where he was persuaded by his parents to go to Oxford University and was accepted at Brasenose College from the following autumn term. A delighted Peebles recalled: ‘With this glorious prospect before me I returned to London and had my first full season with Middlesex. It was one of the happiest times of my life.’ Robbie would have agreed wholeheartedly with that assessment. Nigel Haig had taken over as captain of a team with a hard core of four ageing professionals, J.W.Hearne, Patsy Hendren, Jack Durston and Harry Lee, and a bunch of promising young amateurs, most of whom would be unable to play more than a few games in the season. Even Gubby Allen could only make six appearances, although Peebles remembered: ‘They were happy days whenever Gubby, Walter and I played together.’ Much of the bowling burden fell on the shoulders of Robins and Peebles, Neville Cardus ambiguously commenting, ‘Two boy leg spinners in perpetual and young-limbed ardent motion — this was a sight worth going miles to see, especially to see it at Lord’s.’ In the first nine matches Robbie took 48 wickets, starting in grand style by taking six Leicestershire first-innings wickets for 29 runs, including a hat-trick. In his book Mainly Middlesex, written in a prisoner-of-war camp, Terence Prittie devoted most of a chapter to Robbie’s bowling in this match, variously comparing him with the boxer Jimmy Wilde, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the magician Nevil Maskelyne, and George Gershwin. Robbie surpassed this success with eight Gloucestershire first-innings Test Match Debut