Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

19 Chapter Three Middlesex The future partners arrived together at Lord’s at a time when Middlesex were going through an indifferent spell. They had won the Championship in 1920 and 1921, but it would be another 26 years before the title travelled south again as the professionally based elevens of Yorkshire and Lancashire dominated the competition, except in 1929 and 1936 when neighbours Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire interrupted this Roses’ monopoly. Middlesex finished twelfth in the Championship in 1933. With Patsy Hendren, J.W.Hearne and Harry Lee making runs, the batting wasn’t a problem, although clearly young blood would soon be needed as all three batsmen were in their forties. The bowling was, however, very thin. Only spinners Hearne (with 53) and wisecracking Jim Sims (52) took more than fifty championship wickets, whilst there was little pace to speak of, Jack’s mentor Jack Durston, now aged 42 and in his last season, having switched to off spin. The main problem was establishing a settled side. In 1933 no fewer than 31 players appeared in the Championship; the champions Yorkshire used 19. Middlesex made considerable use of amateurs and suffered more than most by the inability of leading players to devote enough time to the game: Gubby Allen, one of the country’s leading fast bowlers and a useful bat, played just twice; another England player, Walter Robins, who had done the double in 1929, played eight times. To remedy the problem the club announced that they would make greater efforts to discover talented cricketers playing in club cricket. The following season saw a slight upturn in the county’s fortunes and tenth place in the Championship. With 29 players it was still proving difficult to establish a settled side, but at least Middlesex had found a quick bowler and spectacular hitter in 6ft 4in C.I.J. (‘Big Jim’) Smith who came up from Wiltshire at the age of 28 to take 172 wickets, second only to Kent’s Tich Freeman who netted 205 victims. 20 Things improved significantly in 1935. The core of the team was now professional; with a more regular side (only 20 players being used) and third place in the Championship, Middlesex were beginning a purple patch that would see nine successive top-three finishes. Runners-up in each of the four seasons up to the Second World War, Middlesex would become, after Yorkshire, the second-best team in the Championship, although Derbyshire supporters might perhaps not totally agree. The bowling was now varied and well up to the job, and although Hearne, then the county’s second-highest run scorer, and Hendren, still its highest-ever scorer, would be retired by the end of 1937, Bill Edrich and Denis Compton quickly 20 A modest haul by his standards: it was the first time since 1927 he had failed to take at least 250 wickets in a season.