My favourite cricketer: Eric Bedser

Clapham in South London. Not the well-heeled Clapham of today but the late 1940s/early ’50s time when the area was dotted with prefabs to help resolve London’s post-War housing shortage.

It was an unlikely place to fall for cricket but then the Kennington Oval was less than three miles away. Both my parents were cricket fans, my mother was drawn to naming me after one of her two heroes of the time Cyril (Washbrook) or Denis (Compton) while my father took me to the ground at a ridiculously early age.

When my father became slightly upwardly mobile we moved to Epsom but still only a half-hour train ride to Vauxhall and The Oval. 

At the time the side was all-conquering and won the County Championship seven times in a row from 1952–1958. And what players they had – Jim Laker, Tony Lock, Ken Barrington, Micky Stewart, Bernard Constable, Tom Clark, Peter Loader, wicketkeeper Arthur McIntyre, with Stuart Surridge as captain until he was succeeded by the quiet but masterly batsman Peter May. 

And to a young boy infatuated with the game there was one other huge draw to The Oval and Surrey, the twins – Alec and Eric Bedser. I guess they would have been the first adult twins I had seen. I vaguely recall there being twin girls at an early school, but these two were top cricketers and to my young mind Eric no less a performer than his brother… certainly no less important to the Surrey side.

To reflect on the Bedsers’ background is to go into a distant past. They were born on July 4 1918 into a working family. Sons of a bricklayer, they left school at 14 to work as clerks in a London law firm. Cricket was their way out and they were spotted by former Surrey player Alan Peach while playing at his cricket school at Woking.

^{The Bedsers}

Legend has it that when they first arrived at the county they were 20-year-old fast-medium bowlers and one had to change… a coin was tossed, Eric lost and set about learning to bowl off-breaks. Don’t let anyone tell you that it is urban myth, it just has to be true and that is just what Eric would do.

Called up in 1939 they both served in the RAF: both were at Dunkirk and then North Africa. Eric was promoted to warrant officer, but Alec refused a similar promotion so that they could serve together. They returned to cricket in 1946 when they were demobbed. Imagine what those years cost them, Eric especially, in runs and wickets.

I was only too aware that Alec was the England player and supposedly the better cricketer but in my juvenile estimation I thought it merely showed the Test selectors had no sense. But it also meant Eric was there for my county while half the side – Laker, Lock, Barrington and co – was away basking in back-page glory playing against whoever the tourists were that season.

While Alec went on to play 51 Tests, bowl Don Bradman with a famous ball at Adelaide and receive a knighthood, Eric played for Surrey until he was 43, retiring two years after his brother. He scored 14,716 runs in 457 games at an average of 24, and took 833 wickets at an average of 24.95 – not bad for a spinner in a side that had Laker and Lock. 

Eric’s figures speak of a man who was key to Surrey. His highest score was 163 and he once took 7 for 33. He also took five wickets in a innings 24 times and on four occasions took 10 wickets in a match.

In 1950 Eric was selected for the Rest of England v England in a Test trial. In the first innings they were bowled out for just 27 with Laker taking 8 for 2 in 14 overs. Eric made 3 and then bowled 13 wicketless overs for 60 as England scored 229. The second innings for the Rest fared a bit better and Eric top scored with 30 In a total of 113. That was as close as he got
to a cap. 

But his county career gave him fulfilment and naturally as their fame became established they wrote a joint autobiography, Our Cricket Story. Eric could probably have had more of a starring role with another county, but that would never have crossed his mind. Leave Surrey? The very thought still gets me agitated.

^{The 1953 Ryder Cup at Wentworth Club, Virginia Water, Surrey}

He was Surrey through and through, as I was with my junior membership card in the pocket of my short trousers as I sat in London’s finest cricket ground watching the finest players. 

I have Eric’s autograph hidden away somewhere and I think I may have got Alec’s, but who cares. I was never one of the fawning youngsters who approached the two of them and asked: “Which one is Alec?” I just wanted to know which one was Eric.

Steve and Mark Waugh might lay claim to being the most famous twins in cricket but you could easily tell them apart and I can’t believe they would have lived in the same house for their entire lives. They were twins but if a film was made about cricketing twins the Bedsers would win hands down.

Years later you would see the twins at The Oval dressed identically, still commuting in from the same house near Woking where they were brought up and which they helped their father build. Still smiling, still meticulously courteous, still enjoying the game that had given them so much and to which they had contributed so much. 

The former England Test batsman Peter Richardson who knew the twins well told the writer Alan Hill: “The joy that Eric had got from Alec’s success was so blatant. This is one of the nicest things about the brothers.” 

So how fitting that their careers are marked at The Oval by the Bedser stand, two men so important in the history of Surrey (they were both to become president of the club) remembered in one building.

I’m sure they, like me, wanted to call it the Eric Bedser Stand, but no matter it honours them both.

But what if that coin tossed in 1938 had come down on the other side? Well, for me it’s simple, this piece would inevitably be about Alec Bedser, an uncapped spin bowler.

Jon Ryan was sports editor of The Sunday Telegraph from 2000–2008

This article was published in the May edition of The Cricketer - the home of the best cricket analysis and commentary, covering the international, county, women's and amateur game