Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

34 Chapter Six Intermission At the time, of course, nobody knew how long hostilities would last. Jack and Syd were still young but would be nearing 30 when the Championship restarted and like many of their peers had lost some of the potentially best years of their cricketing lives. In his, so far, short first-class career Jack had made 2,660 runs at an average of 37 and had already been spotted as one for the future. Syd had made 1,525 runs and was averaging 21. He had not perhaps quite made the progress hoped for, but when play resumed in 1946 he would soon demonstrate his capabilities. England were due to go to Australia in 1940/41. Len Hutton would of course have been one of the openers, but in the last four Tests before the war he had had four different partners, 48 and the continuing problem of finding a permanent one for him was unresolved. There were a number of candidates, but if Jack had continued to develop as his form suggested, he would have come well into contention. Pelham Warner would state with some certainty that but for the war he would have been Hutton’s partner. 49 In the event Hutton’s partner in the immediate post-war seasons would be Lancashire’s Cyril Washbrook who was just over two years older than Jack. Given his eventual record it is difficult to argue with the selectors’ choice. However, it is interesting to compare Jack’s record in 1939 (1,755 runs at an average of 40.81) with Washbrook’s 1,665 at 38.72. Because of their age cricketers would of course be very well represented in the armed services, and the 1941 Wisden lists an impressive number of Middlesex players who were in the forces, or otherwise serving the country, for example, as munitions workers. Jack and Syd’s initial contribution to the war effort was in the Police War Reserve. A photograph in The Cricketer for June 1980 shows the two young men standing together looking smart and efficient in their police helmets. Jack was soon in action, the press reporting that two men he had caught in an empty house had been fined at Marylebone Police Court as ‘suspected persons’. However, he and Syd would soon find themselves elsewhere. Jack joined the Royal Army Service Corps, a corps of the British Army responsible for delivering supplies to the front line. Soon after war was declared the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was sent to France to help resist the German army. The logistics involved in servicing such a large force was immense and as a driver Jack was soon in the thick of things. During the following winter the troops had dug in along the French-Belgian 48 Paul Gibb (Yorkshire), Harold Gimblett (Somerset), Arthur Fagg (Kent) and Walter Keeton (Nottinghamshire). 49 Warner, Sir Pelham, Cricket Between Two Wars , Chatto and Windus, 1942.