Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

82 was thought to have been showing some uncertainty against pace. Instead they opted for George Emmett of Gloucestershire. Four years Jack’s senior he had a reputation as a good player of fast bowling and had been batting consistently. In the event, however, Lindwall proved too much for him and Hutton was reinstated successfully for the Fourth Test. Jack had one last chance to impress against the tourists when they came to play Middlesex immediately after the drawn Third Test. Unfortunately he went cheaply to the fast-medium Johnston in his first innings, and in the second, shortly after the teams had been presented to the King and Queen, had to retire for 19 after a ball from Lindwall broke his jaw. 110 Forced to miss a number of Middlesex matches, his place as Syd’s opening partner was taken by John Dewes, ‘a thickly built and cheerfully boyish-looking left- hander’. 111 He was likened in style by some to Phil Mead and Maurice Leyland and had been scoring heavily for Cambridge University. In their last trip to the wicket together before Jack came back into the side they led off with 129 at Hove at the end of July. 112 Ironically, a century against Lancashire and 89 against Sussex, following an earlier fifty against the Australians, encouraged the selectors to pitch Dewes in at the deep end as a replacement for the injured Washbrook in the Fifth Test. In common with a number of England batsmen during the series he was not a success. In the Championship Middlesex had a new captain. Walter Robins, a Test selector, stood down because of business commitments and George Mann followed in the footsteps of his father Frank, who had also captained the county and England. (George would captain England the following winter.) Middlesex could not quite emulate the previous season’s achievement as Glamorgan, under Wilf Wooller’s inspirational leadership, took the title over the Severn for the first time. However, this was no fault of Mann, who in his two years at the helm proved a popular and astute leader. He was not in the same mould as Robins, but then who was? Given the loss of Compton and Edrich for all five Tests, and Young, their best bowler, for three, Middlesex’s third place, only 12 points behind Glamorgan, was a commendable performance. Not surprisingly Compton and Edrich did not repeat their extraordinary feats of 1947 but they, and Jack, all averaged over fifty for the county, whilst Syd, albeit with a lower average, also exceeded a thousand runs. Although the Robertson/Brown partnership continued to contribute significantly to Middlesex successes, it was not as prolific as it had been, with a modest four century stands compared with 16 over the previous two seasons. The two were a little slow in coming together as a pairing and in the first month of the season Jack had a variety of opening partners. Reaching forty in each innings, Sharp in particular 110 He was in good company. Compton had famously been hit on the head in the Third Test and Washbrook had had his cap removed by Miller in the opening Test of the previous series in Australia. 111 Arlott, John, Gone to the Test Match , Longmans, Green and Co, 1949. 112 On the day the match started, Saturday 31 July, Scottish sprinter Alastair McCorquodale came fourth in the Olympics 100 metres final at Wembley. A week later he obtained a silver in the 4 x 100 metres relay. He had excelled in the summer game at Harrow and The Times hoped that ‘for the sake of British athletics [he] will resist the charm of the cricket field’. He didn’t; he gave up the track and three weeks later he made his first-class debut for MCC against Ireland, and in 1951 appeared three times for Middlesex. Aussie Summer