LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

52 and the nine games in Canada provided easy wins for the visitors and it was expected that the opposition in the United States would offer even less of a challenge. In Chicago the first match against a Chicago XV was in a public park with baseball games going on all around. According to Ian Peebles: ‘Characteristically Walter Robins was soon in the midst of one of these where he was made very welcome, and astonished the players with his bare-handed fielding.’ John Warr rather later commented: ‘It is probably as one of the greatest fielders in the history of the game that he would choose to be remembered. As a naturally good runner and mover, his bow legs seemed to give him a low centre of gravity. He could swoop and pick up the ball in one breathtaking movement.’ This game was repeated the next day and then the tourists spent a day at the World’s Fair after which they accepted an invitation from ‘associates’ of Al Capone, overlord of a bootlegging cartel from Canada to Florida, to spend an evening seeing something of the city’s underworld nightlife, including visiting various ‘speakeasies’. They left the next day for New York on the famous train, The Twentieth Century Limited , and arrived in the ‘Big Apple’ twenty hours later. There were three matches to play, then the party sailed from New York to Bermuda where they were due to play five matches in five days, all of them at the Police Recreation Club ground at Prospect. There the opposition was expected to be much stronger with all the opposition teams restricted to only eleven players. The first match was drawn but next day there was a confrontation that must have hardened Robbie’s resolve to look for a new job when he returned to Britain. The ground was full at the time scheduled for the match to begin against the St George’s Cricket Club, but there was no sign of Sir Julien. The crowd began to get restless and Robbie decided to take over and toss-up with the other skipper to get the game started. By the time Sir Julien arrived the game was in progress and his side were not doing very well, having lost their first three wickets for only 44 runs. Sir Julien was fuming at the prospect of defeat and refused to be placated by Robbie, even after a stand of 97 for the fourth wicket which restored some pride, only to see the next six wickets fall for 68 runs, including Sir Julien bowled first ball. Despite no opposing team reaching 150 in any innings in any match on the tour to date, a target of 210 looked within the reach of the Bermudians and it took all the skill and cunning of Robbie’s five for 32 and Peebles’ four for 21 to ensure that they got nowhere near the winning total. Sir Julien was on time for the next match, which was another victory for the tourists, and then, being advised that the opposition would be stronger than any of the teams they had faced so far, he decided to sit out and socialise for the last two games against Somerset, the best club on the island and then a representative team, an ‘All-Bermuda XI’, leaving Robbie to captain the side — and take responsibility for any defeat, no doubt! Cricket history was made in game against Somerset when Cahn’s XI became ‘the first white side to play a club of black men, and to mark Part-Time Cricket