Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

128 as it hadn’t been performed in England and was the only person in the country who could have undertaken it. He happened to be working at Leicester at the time, otherwise Jack would not have survived, together with the fact that he was a strong and fit man. Four months later he had a second operation to make a false oesophagus. Surgeons from all over Europe came to watch the operation and study the technique. He was the first person in the country to survive two operations and was in Leicester for nearly six months. Naturally Jack’s work with the Trust came to an end as did a working relationship with Middlesex that had lasted nearly half a century. As an expression of the club’s high regard for him and the service he had given cricket for so long they immediately set up a fund in his name. Joyce remembers in particular that Bill Edrich kept in regular contact when he became ill (although sadly Edrich himself died suddenly just four years later). Thoughtfully, knowing that his coaching days were over, Jack donated his kit so that it could be put to good use by younger players. Jack’s health had of course been seriously affected, and he was restricted in what he could eat. He and Joyce had always enjoyed holidays abroad, and remarkably he still managed some trips after his illness, including driving to Spain. He still also got to Lord’s when he could, and according to an article published in the 1989 Middlesex Review, looking back at his time there, thought of it as his ‘second home’. In his later years he developed a talent for oil painting, and became very good at it. Portraits of Jack’s grandchildren, Caroline and David, take pride of place in Ian’s living room. Ian also showed me Jack’s painting of nearby Kersey. It was his last one: those who know it would, I think, agree that Jack caught the character of this lovely Suffolk village very well. Joyce and Jack made a final move in 1995 in order to live nearer to Ian and his family in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. At the end of the year Jack was a guest at the annual Wisden Film Evening at the National Film Theatre where, among other things, film was shown of the 1947 Oval Test match. The evening’s compere, David Frith, remembered Jack’s gentle smile when he saw himself again on the screen nearly half a century after his Test debut. Sadly Jack died in the autumn of the following year in the West Suffolk Hospital, Bury St Edmunds. Joyce recalled that Jim Swanton was the first person to phone her. 176 Happily, earlier that year he had had one last chance to watch his old county when Secretary Joe Hardstaff, with whose father he had toured the West Indies, invited him to go and watch them play Cambridge University at Fenner’s, the ground on which he made his maiden first-class century nearly 60 years before. Joyce recalled that he had a wonderful time sitting in the pavilion with the players. This happy, but poignant, event has been recorded for posterity, a photograph in the Middlesex CCC Annual Review for 1996/97 capturing Joyce and Jack, immaculately attired as usual, in the May sunshine. The following summer 176 Of the 23 members of the 1947 championship side, only six were still surviving at the time of Jack’s death. Of those six, only three, Denis Compton, George Mann and Alec Thompson, had played regularly. After Cricket