Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

63 Champions bowlers on top. Goddard (fifteen for 156 in the match) once more bowled Middlesex out cheaply, leaving Gloucestershire 169 to win. They made just 100 as Young, Sims and Harry Sharp shared the wickets, leaving their side top of the table by tea. Aged nearly 30, and appearing in only his second championship match (and his first of the season), Sharp was an unexpected star of the match. Before the war he had been told he could look for another county; Middlesex would be glad he didn’t. After making an undefeated 14 in the first innings, he top-scored with a crucial 46 in the second and then took three good wickets in the Gloucestershire second innings. (All in all, a remarkable performance since in a 167-match first-class career he would only take 52 wickets in total). Reaching double figures in both innings of a low-scoring match and, as ever, fielding brilliantly, Syd had contributed fully to a vital victory. Back at The Oval the crowd enthusiastically greeted the announcement of Middlesex’s achievement. After the elegance of Cheltenham Middlesex moved north to experience the more austere charms of the County Ground, Derby. They needed to consolidate their slender lead in the Championship with a good performance. Derbyshire were a strong side, eventually finishing fifth in the table, but two of their leading bowlers, Cliff Gladwin and Bill Copson were away, becoming the first pair of Derbyshire bowlers to open in a Test. Middlesex were of course still missing Compton and Robertson for the same reason and it was therefore essential that somebody else stepped up to compensate. That man would be Syd Brown, in arguably his best match for the county. In the absence of his regular partner, he opened with Alan Fairbairn, a 24-year-old left-handed amateur from Southgate. Fairbairn had an interesting career. It was his third first-class match. In each of the previous two, earlier in the season, he had hit a century. Thereafter a knee injury, and then business calls, restricted his appearances and there were no more centuries. Unusually in the first innings he was simultaneously given out by both umpires, caught and stumped by George Dawkes, the catch of course officially taking precedence. At 168 for two Middlesex were well placed; at 175 for seven they weren’t. However, Syd stood firm and, aided by Young who made 30, equalling the then highest score of his career, 80 took the total to 219 before George Pope, a product of the Derbyshire conveyor belt of fast-medium bowlers, dismissed him for 95 made in three hours 20 minutes. After Young and Sims had spun Middlesex to a 27-run first-innings lead, Brown and Fairbairn quickly took the score to 84. The Derbyshire captain Eddie Gothard, who had made his first-class debut earlier in the season and had all of three first-class wickets to his name, then took one of cricket’s more unlikely hat-tricks with his gentle medium pace. His three victims were Fairbairn, Edrich and Robins (completing a pair and, according to John Arlott, ‘furious’), quite an impressive trio. 81 His final career tally would be just 18 wickets, one of whom the following season would be a certain D.G.Bradman, bowled for 62. That Middlesex recovered to declare at 353 for five was largely due to Syd, who cutting powerfully made 150 not out, and wicketkeeper Leslie 80 He would eventually play 341 first-class matches and make just one fifty. 81 Possibly the only hat-trick taken in first-class cricket by a 43-year-old fielding with his spectacles fixed to his temples by adhesive plaster.