Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

86 Chapter Fifteen Honours Shared Middlesex made a good start to the 1949 season and by the end of May led the Championship. However, though Jack and Syd had both registered a couple of early centuries they had not yet clicked together. Syd had nonetheless achieved his highest first-class score, making 179 at Fenner’s and sharing in an opening partnership of 229 with Sharp against a Cambridge University attack led by future Middlesex captain John Warr. Jack and Syd finally broke their century-partnership duck against Yorkshire. Middlesex had slipped to third in the table behind Yorkshire and leaders Worcestershire. A Lord’s crowd of 29,000 basking in the mid- June sunshine saw a fluctuating first day’s play which started with an opening partnership of 198 between Jack (113) and Syd who was caught by Hutton for 88 to give 18-year-old Fred Trueman his first championship wicket. After this fine start the rest of the side collapsed and the final total was a disappointing 316. The match eventually ended as a draw, but not before Len Hutton, driving superbly, had illuminated it with a century of his own which, remarkably, followed three successive ducks in a season when he would make well over three thousand runs. The England team for the Second Test against New Zealand at Lord’s had been announced over the weekend. It included Washbrook, who had made a century in the First. However, he had to withdraw because of injury and Jack joined Compton, Edrich, Mann and Young in the side. It was no more than he deserved since earlier in the month a century in the North v South Test trial at Edgbaston had failed to win him selection for the First Test. Despite his six for 37 in the South’s first innings a similar fate befell Derbyshire’s Les Jackson. Although Jackson also gained selection later in the series the usefulness of Test trials was clearly questionable. (If Jack is around the top of the list of England batsmen unlucky not to have played more Test cricket, Jackson is well up there as far as the bowlers are concerned.) The country was experiencing an extended spell of very warm weather and drought conditions were starting to affect the supply of domestic water, particularly in London. The match will always be remembered for Martin Donnelly’s magnificent double-century for the visitors. However, before that it was England’s turn to bat. Jack opened with Hutton on the first day in front of a packed crowd and, with people squatting ten deep on the boundary, made 26 before he flicked at a flyer from Jack Cowie and