LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

6 to play — the cricket world saw him as a cavalier character but nobody loathed losing more than he did!’ It was as a footballer that his lion- hearted and tenacious character could be fully exploited as he took the ball at high speed along the touchline at outside-right looking to create or score goals for Cambridge University and later for the famous amateur club Corinthians who, when at their best, could compete with the leading professional clubs of the day. Withmaturity came responsibility and authority within the world of cricket, both of which he welcomed with his customary enthusiasm. Christopher Martin-Jenkins thought him ‘an administrator as lively and enterprising as he had been a player’. To him it was essential that the game must be played with intelligence, technical skill and vision. He always stuck to the basic principle that there was a right way and a wrong way to play the game and when he was right his overwhelming self-belief overcame those who may have had doubts and success would follow. But when he was wrong that same self-belief led him to ignore good counsel and arguments followed. His lifelong habit of telling it exactly as he saw it earned him some antagonists as he did not suffer those he viewed as fools gladly and, as his wife Kathleen recalled: He had a very quick temper, which he never controlled because, I think, he considered it a good trait. I also suspect that he held the theory that if anything happened to annoy him, it was useless just to remonstrate with those responsible, but to make an absolutely terrific hullabaloo then ten-to-one it would not occur again. I expect this made many enemies, but they only remained enemies for a short while as it was all froth and bubble, and he never remembered his violent outbursts. His elder son, Charles, agreed: ‘quick fire anger (with speed to forgive) made him never that easy to live with.’ Whatever arguments might have ensued, it should never be forgotten that, according to Peebles, ‘he had a glorious sense of humour’ and that when necessary he ‘brought an impish, urchin-like, but timely levity which would flash out to relieve the heated or gloomy moment.’ That humour was enjoyed by many and during a visit to Australia, John Bradman, the son of Sir Don, told Richard Robins that ‘your father was the funniest and most irreverent man I’ve ever met’. Both sons, Charles and Richard, were given three forenames like their father and uncle before them. First there was Robert Victor Charles (R.V.C.) Robins, then George Richard Vernon (G.R.V.) Robins. Within the family over the years it became easier to refer to Walter Robins as ‘R.W.V.’ and in all my conversations and on-line communications with Charles and Richard it has been with those initials by which we identified their father when exchanging questions and answers. There no evidence to support the suggestion by Cowdrey that he was known as ‘R.W.V. of Middlesex and England’ to the public at large, and his close friendship with Ian Peebles for over forty years has already contradicted the other assertion that he was only ‘Walter to those who were never quite admitted to that magic circle [of his cricket associates].’ Charles Robins suggested to me during the writing of this biography that ‘Somewhere between Richard and I Introduction