Despite not existing administratively since it was swallowed up by Greater
London in 1965, Middlesex can still field a county cricket side capable of
taking on the best that the rest of England can offer, let alone Mars.
Eight England Test players, many of them household names, plus two from West
Indies and a South African who would surely have appeared many times for his
country if it had not, at the time he played, been banned from Test cricket.
Selection of both XIs is based on players who were Middlesex men throughout
their county careers, albeit Fred Titmus played one game for Surrey when he
was their coach and John Emburey a dozen or so as player-coach of
Northamptonshire at the end of his 23-year playing stint with Middlesex.
Thus Mark Ramprakash, who had an outstanding record for Middlesex but an
even better one since he crossed the Thames to Surrey, did not qualify for
selection.
I have also gone for players whom I have watched with the sole exception of
Patsy Hendren, whose outstanding record demands his place. I will leave it
to others to judge between, for example, Titmus and J.W. Hearne, or between
Vintcent van der Bijl, J.T. Hearne and Gubby Allen, or between Phil Edmonds
and Jack Young - or whether there should be a role for Albert Trott, who
remains the only man to have hit the ball over the present Lord's pavilion,
in 1899
1. Desmond Haynes: one of West Indies’ best opening batsmen, who scored
nearly 7,500 runs in 116 Tests and was part of a renowned partnership with
Gordon Greenidge. Haynes relished the belated career challenge of county
cricket to give excellent service to Middlesex between 1989 and 1994,
playing with a smile on his face and a fine range of strokes in his locker.
2. Mike Brearley: with so much talent and so many strong characters in
the team it needs a supreme leader to keep them, and the opposition, on
their toes, and there has been none better in the English game. A good
batsman who scored more than 25,000 first-class runs, he would otherwise
have missed out on selection for this team in purely playing terms to Jack
Robertson.
3. Bill Edrich: the man bracketed with Denis Compton in one of
cricket's most famous pairings, now commemorated by the pair of stands at
the Nursery End at Lord’s. Edrich was a prolific batsman with nearly 37,000
runs and in his younger days, and in short spells, a quick bowler, who in
this team will support the two specialists at the bottom of the batting
order.
4. Denis Compton: the supreme entertainer of his day whose record 18
centuries and 3,816 runs in the single season of 1947 will never be beaten;
he was renowned for the range of his strokeplay which produced almost 39,000
runs and won him 78 Test caps. He bowled left-arm unorthodox spin and, in
those less pressured and specialist days, also played regularly on the wing
for Arsenal until a knee problem terminated his football.
5. Patsy Hendren: Middlesex’s greatest run-scorer and third overall in
the game’s history behind Hobbs and Woolley with 57,611 in all first-class
cricket between 1907 and 1938; only Hobbs made more than his 170 centuries.
Hendren played in 51 Tests and his outfielding, as well as his batting and
appealing character, made him a huge favourite of the Lord’s crowd between
the wars.
6. Mike Gatting: first played for Middlesex aged 18 and went on to lead
county and country in a 24-season career that brought him 36,549 runs and
79 Test caps; the statistics speak volumes for his appetite for the game and
he was also renowned for his fondness for the excellent Lord's lunches. The
medium-paced bowling of his earlier days will be an extra asset to the side.
7. Fred Titmus: the county’s most successful all-rounder with eight
doubles of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets, as well as 53 appearances for
England; he first played for the county as a 16-year-old and even featured
in a game in 1982 aged 49 to make an appearance in five separate decades. He
had called into the Middlesex dressing-room for a pre-match cup of coffee
and was persuaded by Mike Brearley to don his whites and take three wickets
with his varied off spin in an improbable defeat of Surrey.
8. John Murray: a stylist behind the stumps who won 21 Test caps and
achieved the rare wicketkeeper's double of 1,000 runs and 100 dismissals in
a season, but was for a long time kept out by the greater batting potential
of Jim Parks; ironically when Murray was recalled by England in 1966, he
scored a match-turning hundred. Always immaculately turned out, he had a
ritual before every ball of touching his cap and knocking the fingers of his
wicketkeeping gloves together before crouching down.
9. Phil Edmonds: an individualist with immense natural talent as a
left-arm spinner and an aggressive approach to the game. He won 51 caps
before retiring relatively early to pursue an entrepreneurial business
career; it had begun during his playing days, as evidenced by many
dressing-room phone calls, and perhaps deflected him from even greater
achievement on the field.
10. Vintcent van der Bijl: played only one season for Middlesex, 1980,
in which they won the county championship, but during his brief career in
England and far longer one in his homeland, South Africa, he showed
exceptional ability as a fast-medium bowler of unerring accuracy who posed
a constant threat to batsmen from his 6ft 7in frame. He took 85 wickets at
14.72 for Middlesex in his full season and set any number of records back
home.
11. Wayne Daniel: a truly fast and hostile bowler from Barbados who
became the “go-to man” for both Brearley and his successor as captain,
Gatting, if they needed a partnership broken or run-making to be curbed.
With 685 wickets for Middlesex at 22 apiece Daniel would surely have played
far more than ten Tests, had he not been a contemporary of so many of West
Indies’ greatest fast bowlers.
My favourite XI
1. Jack Robertson: elegant opening batsman who was unlucky that his
career coincided with those of Hutton, Washbrook, and others, and he won
only 11 Test caps; Robertson continued to coach the county’s young players
for many years after he retired. Only Mike Brearley’s captaincy skills keep
him out of the all-time XI
2. Graham Barlow: in a period when fielding was a largely unpractised
skill Barlow's speed and agility set him above the crowd - and with him on
one side of the wicket and Roland Butcher on the other, Middlesex had an
outstanding pair. Barlow was also a capable opening batsman, good enough to
win three England caps.
3. Peter Parfitt: following jauntily in the steps of another
Norfolk-born man, Bill Edrich, he was a fixture in the Middlesex side from
1956 to 1972 with his left-handed batting, magnificent catching and handy
off spin; he played 37 Tests, with a golden summer against Pakistan in 1962
containing three centuries
4. Clive Radley: a true man of Lord’s, though like Edrich and Parfitt
he was born in Norfolk, Radley played for Middlesex for 24 seasons and is
now MCC’s head coach; a superb close fielder and scamperer between the
wickets in addition to his highly dependable batting.
5. Roland Butcher: the first black player to represent England, making
his Test debut in his native Barbados in 1981; he had come to England aged
14 and, though winning only two more caps, went on to play many attacking
innings for Middlesex. He was a brilliant fielder, hoovering the ball up
with the safest of hands at slip or in the outfield before unleashing a
powerful, low throw.
6. Ron Hooker: once memorably described in the popular press as
“Middlesex’s barrel-chested all-rounder”, Hooker lived up to his surname as
a hard-hitting batsman and lively medium-pacer who was considered for an
Ashes tour in 1965-66.
7. John Emburey: off-break bowler who formed with Phil Edmonds one of
the strongest spin attacks in county cricket, though in his 64 appearance
for England they played only 20 times together. Emburey was also an
effective lower-order batsman with a method all his own and one that he
would not pass on his charges in his present role of county coach/director
of cricket
8. John Price: fast bowler never to be forgotten for his remarkable
round-the-corner approach like a runner entering the home straight; a
late-starter in county cricket, he played 15 Tests and was an elegant, if
not always prolific, tailend batsman
9. Mike Sturt: a capable deputy to John Murray in the early Sixties and
stepped into the breach when the county twice had wicketkeeping injury
crises in the late Seventies. He earns a place for his distinctive names,
Michael Ormonde Cleasby - although run close in that department by other
Middlesex wicketkeepers in Gregor MacGregor, Wilfred Frederick Frank (Fred)
Price and Roderick Calder (Roddy) Kinkead-Weekes
10. Phil Tufnell: the roguish "Cat" was already a familiar character in
cricket before winning "I'm a Celebrity" brought him to a wider audience; as
a left-arm spinner he could be a match-winner for both county and country
(42 caps), though his batting and fielding did not fit that category.
11. Alan Moss: fast bowler whose England career was restricted to nine
caps through coinciding with the likes of Bedser, Trueman, Statham, Tyson
and Bailey; 1,301 wickets at an average under 21 attest to his quality and
his uncomplicated batting at No 11, when it came off, was a schoolboy's
delight.
