Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

30 Gathering Clouds for Middlesex and would go on to be Jack’s opening partner later in the season. 39 Another county connection was that future captain George (F.G.) Mann opened the Cambridge batting. In the absence of Smith, Jack not only opened the batting but also, in the only Cambridge innings, the bowling. He quickly turned the tables on Carris by dismissing him leg-before, although it is possible that the bespectacled batsman was disadvantaged by the light drizzle falling at the time. Jack batted consistently over the next month, but without breaking through the fifty barrier. He had, however, become a regular member of the side, and was presented with his county cap at lunch on the first day of the Gloucestershire match at the end of May. Syd was less consistent, making a couple of fifties but also several single-figure scores. Their only partnership of any consequence in this period came against the West Indians in early June. On their third Test-playing tour of the country the visitors weren’t yet the power they were to become after the war. However, as they scored 665, 40 the great George Headley making a double-century, and won by an innings and plenty before lunch on the third day (against the second-best team in the country) they gave an inkling of the future. In fact, given that they had scored 580 before the fourth wicket fell, the final score represented something of a collapse. Their attack was led by the legendary Learie Constantine who no longer relied on fiery pace but had become a bowler of considerable guile and variation. Going in after lunch on the second day Jack and Syd emulated the West Indians’ rate of progress and took the score to 89 in an hour before Jack was late on an artfully disguised Constantine faster ball and went leg-before for 33. Syd, who had hooked Constantine’s first ball for six, left soon after, stumped off leg-spinner John Cameron for 47. Before the second day was out Jack and Syd were walking to the wicket again. This time they were quickly separated. On the previous tour in 1933 Manny Martindale had taken 103 wickets. He was not the same force now, but he clearly still had some pace left because Syd, whom he dismissed leg-before without scoring, received such a blow on the inside of his knee that he had to be carried off the field. A fortnight later at the County Ground, Northampton, Jack at last made his maiden championship century. Shared (then, but not now) with the town’s Football League club, Wantage Road is arguably one of the less attractive grounds on the circuit, but in a setting of red-brick terraced houses it has a certain urban charm. Jack probably liked it: apart from Lord’s he scored more runs there (1,032) than at any other ground. The home side would finish the championship season in sixteenth place, a slight improvement on the bottom place in which they had resided for the previous five seasons. 41 However, although they eventually lost they gave 39 His elder brother Harold had had a brief career with Middlesex a few years previously. It had been a modest one, but he did at least achieve the feat of carrying his bat, for 35 out of 92, against the might of the Yorkshire attack at Bradford in 1929. 40 The then second-highest team total at Lord’s. 41 Three weeks previously they had won their first championship match for four years, an enthusiastic Whit Monday crowd at the County Ground cheering them on to a two-day victory over Leicestershire.