LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

5 Introduction Throughout his life Walter Robins was referred to by a variety of names or nicknames depending upon his relationship to the speaker or writer. Many cricketers are known by two, sometimes three names: Walter Robins had six or seven at least. According to Colin Cowdrey he was ‘a small, dynamic man known as Robbie to his cricket associates, Walter to those who were never quite admitted to that magic circle and R.W.V. of Middlesex and England to the public at large’. That list, though, was incomplete because to those who were unsettled by his persistent air of confidence he was ‘Cock Robin’, and to others who acknowledged his passionate, sometimes headstrong, love of the game but were unable to commit themselves with the same audacity, he was just plain ‘Robins’ or ‘Mr Robins’, and sometimes even ‘Mr Chairman’. He was christened Robert Walter Vivian and was the first in the family to be given three forenames. It was customary at one time to give new arrivals in a family the name of a recently deceased relative and the first name Robert probably came from the late brother of Walter’s grandmother. Vivian was his father’s name and Walter came from an uncle, who during occasional visits to Stafford played cricket alongside Vivian as a slow left- arm bowler. But the new member was welcomed into the Robins family as Walter and it was a variation of that name that became the first of his nicknames after it was noticed that, as a small child, he would often be found singing while playing and it wasn’t long before he became known as ‘Jolly Wally’. At school he was ‘Walter’ to his friends, ‘Robins’ to the other boys, and selection for ‘The Rest’ against ‘Lord’s Schools’ at Lord’s in 1924 saw the first appearance on a scorecard of ‘R.W.V.Robins’. For his debut for Middlesex in 1925 he was recorded in the style for all amateur cricketers appearing in county cricket at that time as ‘Mr R.W.V.Robins.’ Arriving at Cambridge University that autumn he embraced all aspects of undergraduate life, sporting and social, with such uninhibited zeal and verve that his universal popularity soon earned him the nickname of ’Robbie’. But to close family and friends he was always ‘Walter’, although in her first letters to him, his future wife Kathleen Knight observed the correct etiquette and addressed them to ‘Robert’. One of his earliest and closest friends was Ian Peebles of Middlesex and England and he would have been the ideal person to have written a biography as he knew all aspects of his friend’s intractable and impatient personality, and admired him because he was ‘fiery and determined and had the courage to be outspoken on all occasions’. His younger son, Richard, believes that his father ‘threw everything into any game he played and took on the contest at the charge — not specifically because he wanted to entertain, but because that was the only way he knew how