Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

21 Professional cricket of course was, and still is, an uncertain career. It was relatively well paid, but with no guarantee of success, whilst injury or loss of form might bring it to an abrupt end. There was the need to find winter employment and, at the end, the necessity for most cricketers, aged around 40, often unqualified for other occupations, and with families to support, to find new employment. Parents are no doubt always concerned whether their offspring have made the right career choice. Cyril Washbrook’s, for example, had hoped that he would become a schoolmaster and only agreed to their 18-year-old son joining Lancashire on the understanding that if, after one season, things hadn’t worked out he would look somewhere else for a career. 22 Perhaps if his parents had been more insistent on their son going into teaching Jack’s Test career might have developed differently! And some years later young Frank Tyson’s father made it clear that under no circumstances would he be allowed to go into professional cricket when it was possible for him to go to university. 23 Jack’s parents, as we have already seen, supported their son’s career choice. In Syd’s case, however, his son Rob thought it was Syd’s older brother, rather than his father, who encouraged him to follow a sporting career. This is no reflection on Brown senior. Like other fathers he might just have wanted his son to pursue more secure employment. Harry Lee summed up the uncertainty of groundstaff life: ‘There are many chosen for the Lord’s groundstaff who never achieve the heights of a county match … . The boys bowl away for a few years in the nets, then become discouraged, or their talents fail to develop, and they must set to earn a living in some less pleasant way.’ Having said that, if Lord’s didn’t work out it wasn’t necessarily the end of the cricketing world. For example, Lawrie D’Arcy began at Lord’s at the same time as Jack and Syd. He and Jack played together for Chiswick Priory and would remain good friends before, sadly, dying within two weeks of each other. Lawrie never played first-class cricket, but after the war he still managed to make the game his profession, including becoming cricket coach at Epsom College and a Minor Counties umpire. 22 Washbrook, Cyril, Cricket: The Silver Lining , Sportsguide Publications 1950. 23 Tyson, Frank, A Typhoon called Tyson , Heinemann, 1961. Middlesex Lord’s ground staff pulling the roller in 1935. Laurie Gray in the lead, Syd second from right, Alec Thompson fourth from left.