Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

81 The visit of the Australians In 1921 genesis to the visit of the Australians to Old Buckenham earlier in the season and a brief description of what Jeremy Malies has described as ‘the most romantic match in the history of the game’ 59 will serve as a coda to Robinson’s career as a financier of high quality cricket. Given an absolutely free hand to pick whoever he wanted, Archie chose to base his team almost entirely on current or former Light Blues. In June, he made the short journey from Old Buckenham to watch Cambridge take on the tourists and though the university was soundly thrashed by an innings and 14 runs, he saw enough potential to select six of the current Blues. The three Ashton brothers and Percy Chapman provided a nucleus of fast-scoring batsmen who were also brilliant fielders and Clem Gibson and leg-spinner ‘Father’ Marriott were quality bowlers. The Light Blue contingent was completed by keeper George Wood (who, with Gibson and Archie himself, were the only survivors from the match at Old Buckenham) and by Michael Falcon, a classy paceman who had been unlucky not to be selected for at least one Test but who was now over 30 and completely out of practice owing to his duties as an MP. To complete his team Archie selected Geoffrey Foster, a competent but not outstanding batsman who had been a Dark Blue many years before, and Aubrey Faulkner, who once had claims to be the best all-rounder in the world but who, like Falcon, seemed to be past his ‘sell-by’ date (and who was neither remotely fit nor even English). Ronald Mason (him again!) described Archie’s selection as ‘an interesting, gay, random, attractive, hugely vulnerable side’. It became even more vulnerable when Marriott had to cry off due to illness and Archie drafted in his boozing mate, Walter Brearley, who had won four 59 Warwick Armstrong’s biographer, Gideon Haigh, agrees with Malies, referring to it as ‘one of the century’s most celebrated matches’. Lionel Robinson with the Australian team.