Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

118 Final Summer with the exception of what was in effect an England second-team tour in 1951/52, he never got a chance. As remarked previously, some thought he had weaknesses, but he was being judged by the highest standards and, whether these critics were right or not, his contemporaries had their own technical deficiencies. Not surprisingly he was disappointed not to have played more for England. A dignified man, and one of the most popular in the game, he never spoke ill of people. However, somebody who knew him very well in his later years told me that he was less than enamoured with the influential Gubby Allen, who he thought had a lot to do with the paucity of his England career. Allen seems to have been in a number of cricketers’ bad books. Joe Hardstaff was irked by his autocratic behaviour as they clashed over a number of issues on the 1947/48 tour of the West Indies. 164 Derbyshire’s Les Jackson was another cricketer who was very unlucky to have played so little Test cricket, and Fred Trueman was in no doubt that Allen had much to do with this. 165 And Fred Titmus also said that Allen’s opinion of him had prevented him becoming an England regular sooner; to be fair, after Titmus’ eventual success with England in Australia, Allen did apologise to him and admitted that he had been mistaken. 166 Perhaps playing for Middlesex didn’t help. E.M.Wellings suggested that Jack would surely have played more Tests if Compton and Edrich hadn’t taken the spotlight at Lord’s, whilst Bob Appleyard thought that their presence in the England side probably meant that the selectors didn’t want to pick another player from the same county. It is interesting to compare Jack’s career record with Washbrook’s, and with those of some others who opened for England, not necessarily in every match they played, during Jack’s career. It is not an exhaustive list; others could have been included. First-class Cricket Tests Runs Ave J.D.B.Robertson (Middlesex) 11 31,914 37.50 C.Washbrook (Lancashire) 37 34,101 42.67 R.T.Simpson (Nottinghamshire) 27 30,546 38.32 D.S.Sheppard (CU and Sussex) 22 15,840 43.51 J.T.Ikin (Lancashire) 18 17,968 36.81 D.Kenyon (Worcestershire) 8 37,002 33.63 F.A.Lowson (Yorkshire) 7 15,321 37.18 J.G.Dewes (CU and Middlesex) 5 8,564 41.77 Detailed analysis and interpretation of these figures is outside the scope of this book. However, they do illustrate that there were other candidates 164 Moulton, Roger, Lives in Cricket: Joe Hardstaff: Supreme Stylist , ACS Publications, 2010. 165 Carey, Mike, Les Jackson: A Derbyshire Legend , Tranters, 1997. 166 Westcott, Chris, Class of ’59 , Mainstream Publishing, 2000. In 1959 the American and British Chewing Gum Co produced a set of very attractive collectable cards to celebrate the careers of 48 leading cricketers of the day. Westcott found a set in his attic in 1996 and set himself the task of interviewing all the cricketers portrayed (or where they had passed away, their relatives). The result is a very interesting and readable book.