Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

59 chasing 48 to win but Jack stood firm and the runs were obtained without further loss. The Nottinghamshire match had made it seven Middlesex victories in a row and left them 28 points above Gloucestershire, who had a game in hand. Rain on the first day of their next match, against Yorkshire at Lord’s, made it difficult for them to achieve an eighth victory. Last year’s champions were in a period of transition and would finish the season joint seventh. After Yorkshire had made 187, Jack and Syd finally got to the wicket with two and a half hours of the second day left. On a drying pitch they did well to struggle to 98 by the close. Apparently as they came off they were summoned to see Robins, still in his bath, and told to get on with it. Next morning conditions had improved and they followed the captain’s orders, scoring another 124 in 85 minutes. They both reached three figures and their 222 was only the second double-century opening stand made for Middlesex against Yorkshire (218 by Andrew Stoddart and Herbert Hayman in 1896 being the first) . And it was a decent Yorkshire attack, including five bowlers who had bowled, or were to bowl, for England − Bowes, Coxon, Smailes, Wardle, Yardley − and a sixth, off- spinner Robinson, who would finish his first-class career with just over a thousand wickets. After a lunchtime declaration Yorkshire comfortably held out for a draw. Middlesex suffered their second championship defeat of the season a week later at picturesque Castle Park, Colchester, roses and all. Opening with 121 in the first innings and 172 in the second, Jack and Syd did their best to make up for the absence of Compton and Edrich, who were away at Lord’s breaking the Test record for the third wicket by posting 370 together. However, after Jack and Syd were parted, their colleagues were lured to destruction by leg-spinner Peter Smith (sixteen for 215 in the match), ably supported by wicketkeeper Tom Wade, who made four second-innings stumpings. The gap at the top of the table was now down to four points. Jack and Syd nearly repeated their feat a month later when Essex came to Lord’s for the return match, putting on 92 in the first innings and 169 in the second. (Such was the uneven nature of the Middlesex fixture list at the time that this was their only home game between the middle of June and the middle of August.) This time, however, Compton and Edrich were available to follow up their side’s good start and Middlesex eventually won comfortably enough. Robins wanted quick runs and quick runs is what Robertson and Brown gave him. In the first innings they had 45 on the board after half an hour; fine entertainment for a Saturday crowd of over 20,000. In the second they scored their runs at more than two a minute, Jack making exactly one hundred, and Syd 76. Surprised at the sight of an orthodox county opening batsman hitting the ball ‘here, there and everywhere’, The Times curiously referred to Jack’s batting as ‘hilarious’. 77 Middlesex eventually bowled Essex out on the last afternoon but there was less than an hour to spare, and it took Syd’s 77 His 77-minute century was the season’s fastest in the Championship. His century at Colchester the month before (in 85 minutes) was the second fastest. Champions