Obituaries index: A-E

ALEXANDER, FRANCIS JAMES, died on June 19, 2005, aged 94. Frank Alexander played 13 matches for Western Australia in their pre-Shield days of the 1930s, mostly as an opening batsman. His best performance came in his final season, 1937-38, in a non-first-class match against New South Wales, when he made 105 and 48 against a strong attack at Sydney. For many years he was a senior official in the Western Australian Supreme Court.

ALTHAM, RICHARD JAMES LIVINGSTONE, MBE, died on August 17, 2005, aged 81. The son of H. S. Altham, the administrator and historian, Dick Altham scored freely in club cricket, mainly for Free Foresters and the Arabs, the wandering club founded by E. W. Swanton, and was their secretary for 11 years. He made 116 for Marlborough against Rugby at Lord's in 1942, and played one match for Oxford University in 1947. His sister married "Podge" Brodhurst.

ASGARALI, NYRON SULTAN, died on November 5, 2006, aged 85, after a fall at home. Asgarali was a sound, unspectacular opening batsman from Trinidad who had a brief, late and rather pale flowering in Test cricket when he was picked to tour England as a 36-year-old in 1957. Amid a gifted - though, on that tour, outmatched - batting line-up, Asgarali drew adjectives such as "worthy". He was picked for the two London Tests, but his 29 at The Oval was his highest score, and that was no triumph: his dismissal precipitated West Indies' collapse from 68 for one to 89 all out. At Edgbaston, his catch as substitute removed Colin Cowdrey and ended the stand of 411 with Peter May. Asgarali did make centuries against Nottinghamshire and Kent, and was a steady run-scorer at home in a career strung out over 20 years, including successive innings of 103, 128 and 83 against British Guiana in 1951-52. He later managed the Trinidad team and acted as liaison officer on various tours. Gregory, one of his seven children, also played for Trinidad.

AUSTIN, ARTHUR WHITELOCK, who died on August 26, 2006, aged 97, shared top billing with Sir Donald Bradman as joint-patron of Durham when the county were promoted to the Championship in 1992. This caused some puzzlement in the wider world, though not in Durham, where he had been successively wicketkeeper, secretary and chairman, leading the successful application for firstclass status. Austin played 60 matches for Durham as a wicketkeeper between 1936 and 1954 - including the two-day games against both the 1938 and 1948 Australians - and habitually stood up even to bowlers as fast as Alec Coxon and Ron Aspinall. As a result, he stumped (62) almost as many as he caught (67). He was a gentleman cricketer, who batted in a cravat and helped build up the Wensleydale Creameries, founded by his grandfather. When he retired, he devoted himself to administration, and attended Durham board meetings until 2005. The restaurant at Riverside is named after him. Current club president Tom Moffat said: "In the 1970s and 1980s, Durham were the finest minor county side in the country, and almost all of that was down to Arthur."

BADER, NAUMAN, who died of a heart attack in Lahore on June 5, 2006, aged 43, was primarily a statistician. He edited ten editions of the Pakistan Cricket Board annual, and his works included Pakistan's version of the Cricketers' Who's Who. He also ran a sports promotion company; Shoaib Akhtar was one of his clients.

BANNISTER, ALEXANDER JAMES, died on December 3, 2006, aged 92. Alex Bannister was cricket correspondent of the Daily Mail from 1947 to 1979, apart from two short breaks when he was displaced by flashier rivals. His journalism was never flashy, but it was the epitome of the old Mail tradition, based on hard graft and top-class contacts, superbly maintained: Bannister got much of his information from Sir Alec Bedser and Sir Donald Bradman, which was hard to match. He was so assiduous that on tour he would sometimes spend his evenings sitting in the hotel lobby; everyone else came and went from boozy nights out while he observed who was doing what, and had quiet conversations with the passers-by. In the press box, Bannister was perennially dyspeptic, a condition perhaps brought about by Mail politics, and certainly by Mail sub-editors: "If you gave 'em the Ten Commandents, they'd cut them to four-and-a-half." He was generally disapproving of writers with a more dilettante approach, which covered almost everyone. However, the moaning was always relieved by his engaging trademark phrase - everyone was addressed as "ol' son" - and the mordancy of his humour. Once, on tour in upcountry India in the days when such modern conveniences as electricity and plumbing were barely rumours, he declined all offers of an after-dinner drink at the club: "I can't decide whether to go to the lounge and watch the colour television, or go to my room and play with my rat." Few knew that his war had been far more arduous: he was captured by the Germans during the Italian campaign, and escaped through the freezing mountains, digging up swedes with his hands. And during his long, happy retirement, he mellowed into a twinkling old gent, and the Cricket Writers' Club's much-loved elder statesman: he was in fine form at the 2006 dinner shortly before he died.

BARKER, GORDON, who died on February 10, 2006, aged 74, was one of the most consistent of all the Yorkshiremen forced into exile to ply their trade because of the strength of the county's cricket. He came from Farsley - home of his contemporaries Ray Illingworth and Doug Padgett - and after Yorkshire said no, was recommended to Essex by his commanding officer, an Essex member, while doing National Service. He made his first-class debut against the touring Canadians in 1954 and, against a fair attack, made a duck and the first of his 30 hundreds, then hardly missed a match until he faded out in 1971. He was a classic Yorkie - small, opinionated, down-to-earth, fond of a pint, fit, and tough as old boots. Barker quickly formed a chalk-and-cheese opening partnership with the very religious Dickie Dodds. Once he played and missed at an entire over from Brian Boshier of Leicestershire. "Dickie," he called to the other end, "you've seen the light, haven't you?" "Well, yes," said Dodds, setting up Barker's pay-off: "Shine the bugger down here then, will you?" Usually, though, he defended fearlessly, and cut and hooked with aplomb. Team-mates called him "The Great Bark", a name he is believed to have invented himself. In 1971 Barker was appointed coach at Felsted School, where he turned out three England players: Derek Pringle, John Stephenson and Nick Knight. "He didn't have all the badges," said Stephenson, "but he gave great advice and as much time as we wanted. Great man." When Knight was told Barker was dying, he was on his way to a dinner. He turned round and drove 150 miles to get to his bedside.

BAROT, JAIRAJ, who died on January 11, 2006, aged 55, played 24 matches for Baroda in the 1970s without conspicuous success. He made just one halfcentury, 92 against Maharashtra, and took 14 wickets. He later coached Baroda's youngsters.

BARRON, WILLIAM, died on January 2, 2006, aged 88. Bill Barron was a Durham-born left-hander who came south after the war to play full-back for Northampton Town and, almost incidentally, turn out for the county. He was already 28 when he made his debut but established himself as a middle-order regular for the first six post-war seasons, and played his part in the club's recovery from seemingly eternal hopelessness in 1949. His maiden century, 151, came at The Oval in 1946, and Peter Murray-Willis, the rather miscast captain, offered him a basket of fruit afterwards instead of the usual celebratory jug of ale. Fruit was hard to come by, and this was a generous gesture. But, since Barron had once bagged most of the team beer by popping his false teeth into the jug and shouting "That's mine", it was an inappropriate one: the fruit story was told with relish by contemporaries decades afterwards.

BARTON, MICHAEL RICHARD, died on July 1, 2006, aged 91. For almost a decade it seemed as if Barton would be remembered as a stylish right-hander whose unbeaten 74 did much to win Oxford the 1937 Varsity Match. Earlier that season he had made 192 against a Gloucestershire attack containing Tom Goddard and Wally Hammond. But, in 1948, Surrey were casting around for a captain - and Barton got the call. "It was extraordinary, really," he admitted later. "I was only playing occasional club cricket, and I'd never captained a side in my life." Surrey's professionals were suspicious, with reason: they had already been saddled with one unknown amateur skipper, when Nigel Bennett got the job in 1946, apparently because the committee muddled him up with a better-known Bennett, Leo. But Barton soon showed his class, stroking 124 against MCC in his first match, and took the reins for most of that season - Surrey finished a close second to Glamorgan - and the three that followed. He did not impress everyone. "Barton had considerable batting ability but was a dreamy captain," recalled E. M. Wellings in Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1986: "He was as unobtrusive as Gower. He fielded in the slips, and the picture lingers of him meandering down the pitch after each over, and of his rule-of-thumb bowling changes. Starting in the field at 11.30, he used to take off his No. 2 opening bowler, usually Parker or Surridge, at 11.55, and his No. 1, Alec Bedser, at 12.15." Barton passed 1,000 runs in three of his four Surrey seasons, narrowly missing out in 1950 - but that year did bring a major bonus: it was Barton's boundary (against Leicestershire) that ensured his side shared the Championship title with Lancashire. At the end of the following season he handed Stuart Surridge the reins of what was maturing into a powerful, and ultimately peerless, team.

BEARSHAW, BRIAN, who died on July 14, 2006, aged 73, was cricket correspondent of the Manchester Evening News for 20 years, and Wisden's Lancashire correspondent from 1983 to 1997. He had a deep love and knowledge of the county's cricket, reflected in his 1990 official history, From the Stretford End. "Bearers" was a gentle, considerate figure in the press box who, in a time when his paper took cricket seriously, covered several Ashes tours. Otherwise, he spent his winters walking contemplatively along Britain's canals, a hobby that itself produced several books.

Inseparable to the last: Eric (left) and Alec Bedser © The Cricketer Enlarge

BEDSER, ERIC ARTHUR, who for most of his life was the second-most famous identical twin in Britain, died on May 24, 2006, aged 87. The most famous, of course, was his brother, Sir Alec. Taken in isolation, Eric was a fine county allrounder who, in thinner times, might have played a Test match. But nothing in Eric's life happened in isolation. The twins' lives were bound together in ways that mesmerised the world even more than their cricket, and provided evidence for the practitioners of an essentially pragmatic game that there were things on heaven and earth beyond ordinary human understanding.

The twins arrived at The Oval identical in bowling styles as well. But at the urging of their mentor Alan Peach, who ran a cricket school near their home in Woking, Eric (supposedly on the toss of a coin) switched to bowling off-spin and worked on his batting. Both played against the two universities in 1939. In the RAF, their main concern was staying together: Alec refused promotion to stop them being separated, so Eric outranked him. But from then on, though he was the older by ten minutes, Eric would play second fiddle.

Bowling off-spin may have been the wrong decision, since Eric spent his career overshadowed by Jim Laker, and would generally bowl better when Laker was missing. Meanwhile, Alec was picked for England's first Test after the war and remained a regular for a decade. The discrepancy was never a problem for them. They always seemed far more concerned with what the other was doing. "We are, for all purposes, one," insisted Eric. "All Eric ever felt about Alec's success was pride," said their team-mate Micky Stewart.

Eric's progress was slow but steady. In contrast to Alec, he made little impression in 1946. But he passed 1,000 runs in the 1947 Championship, and in 1949 he scored 1,740 runs, and was only 12 wickets short of the double. Wisden 1950 said he had "developed into a fine all-rounder", and that year he won a place in the famous Bradford Test trial, where Alec reluctantly had to bowl to him: "It's the first time I've ever seen a man bowling to himself," said selector Tom Pearce.

Eric scored his 1,000 regularly until 1953, although the runs dwindled after that. He came closest to 100 wickets in Laker's year, 1956, when he took 92, and finished ahead of Laker in the Surrey Championship averages. Stuart Surridge, the captain, said Surrey might not have been champions without Eric. He remained a vital member of the side throughout their seven title-winning seasons, and played all but 14 of his 457 first-class matches for the county. Eric was no mean spinner either: "He got a lot of revolutions on the ball," said Micky Stewart. "He would be England's off-spinner today by a street."

As it was, though, Eric's fame rested on the relationship. The brothers remained good-natured about other people's difficulties in telling them apart. The stories - most of them seemingly true - were an endless source of fascination to everyone else: their height and weight were always identical, as were their golf swings; and they invariably dressed alike, except when playing golf, when they helped their partners along by wearing different colours. Younger team-mates would sometimes take bets, and mischievously roll up Eric's trouser leg to prove they were wearing the same colour socks. The most mysterious story of all, reported in Alan Hill's biography, The Bedsers, concerns the 15 premium bonds they were each given as a reward for the 1957 Championship. They lay forgotten in a drawer for 35 years. One day in 1992, two identical envelopes came through the post. Both twins had won £50.

Some thought Eric a little more forthcoming, but at the same time slightly less sociable and humorous than Alec. In their successful office-equipment business, Eric was said to be the one with the hard head for figures. And on the field they could bicker like any married couple: "You want to push another slip in there." "No, I don't." But for 87 years, they were rarely apart, and hated it when they were. When Alec was chairman of selectors, the press nicknamed him "My bruvver", because that was the recurring phrase of his conversation.

BERRY, ROBERT, died on December 2, 2006, aged 80. A slightly built, very slow left-arm spinner with a shock of fair hair, Bob Berry was the first man to be capped by three counties. He started with Lancashire in 1948, and two years later was called up by England to face West Indies at Old Trafford. Berry took nine wickets in England's win - another debutant slow left-armer, Alf Valentine, claimed 11 - but he failed to take any at Lord's as West Indies completed their historic "calypso" victory. John Arlott concluded: "Berry spins the ball less than some of his type, but he flights it well, and varies his length with a shrewdness and a strategic sense not often to be found in young spin bowlers... his weakness is, perhaps, that his bowling is just too slow."

By the end of the season, Berry was out of the England side - and out of Lancashire's too, as they preferred another slow left-armer in Malcolm Hilton, who turned the ball more and batted better. Berry was nonetheless the chosen one for the 1950-51 tour of Australia (bizarrely, his selection was announced while Hilton was making his debut in the final Test) but had a quiet time, taking only 11 first-class wickets and never threatening to make the Test side. Back home, Berry and Hilton continued an apparently friendly rivalry, and Berry appeared to have cemented his place in 1953, when his 98 wickets included all ten in an innings (for 102), when he bowled Lancashire to an 18-run victory over Worcestershire at Blackpool. But Hilton returned to favour in 1954, when Berry was given only seven matches, and - perhaps mindful of that ten-for - Worcestershire signed him up for 1955. He took five for 60 against the South Africans in his first match for them, and spent four enjoyable seasons at New Road, ending up with 250 wickets, before moving to Derbyshire, where his four years were rather less productive. In retirement he played crown green bowls, ran a pub and, after his wife died, married Hilton's widow.

BHATT, RAJENDRA RAMPRASAD, died on August 24, 2006, age unknown. Raju Bhatt kept wicket in 17 matches for Baroda in the 1960s, usually opening the batting as well. His highest score was 60 against Gujarat in 1965-66.

BOCKING, ALBERT, who died on July 16, 2006, aged 65, was president of Nottinghamshire, having been chairman from 1999 to 2004. An engineer and businessman, he oversaw the construction of the Fox Road stand during his chairmanship. "He provided the vision and leadership which have seen Trent Bridge develop into one of the finest cricket grounds in the world," said David Collier, the ECB chief executive who was previously with Nottinghamshire.

BOTTEN, JAMES THOMAS, died on May 14, 2006, aged 67. Jackie Botten was a hard-working medium-paced South African purveyor of shrewd swing and seam. He only played three Tests, opening the attack with Peter Pollock throughout the short but successful tour of England in 1965, without obvious reward. But his contemporaries rated him highly: Jackie McGlew is thought to have wanted him in his side for the 1960 tour but was rebuffed by the selectors. Botten was playing for an extremely weak North-Eastern Transvaal team in the B section of the Currie Cup and, though he broke the domestic record in 1958-59 by taking 63 wickets in a seven-game season, averaging 10.53, this form was regarded with suspicion. Geoff Griffin (see below) was taken instead, only to be forced out of the tour for throwing. As an administrator, Botten played a leading role in the transformation of North-Eastern Transvaal into a much stronger Northern Transvaal side based on Pretoria. He also wrote pithy, unghosted, cricket columns for local papers.

BRODHURST, ARTHUR HUGH, died on June 24, 2006, aged 89. "Podge" Brodhurst was a popular public-school master who taught at Winchester for more than 30 years, and had three separate stints in charge of cricket. Among his pupils was the Nawab of Pataudi, later captain of India. Brodhurst played regularly for Cambridge just before the war, securing a Blue in 1939, shortly after scoring a domineering century in two and a half hours off a Yorkshire attack led by Bill Bowes and Frank Smailes. He played five matches for Gloucestershire in 1939, and one in 1946. But there was an exotic and even eccentric streak to his life and cricket: born in Buenos Aires, he has been credited with reintroducing cricket to Holland when he served as mayor of Haarlem at the end of the war; his last match was in Toronto, for MCC v Canada in 1951; and, when serving in the North African desert, he was spotted with a cricket bag during the siege of Tobruk, asking whether anyone fancied a net. "His first match for Gloucestershire was at Maidstone," wrote David Foot in The Guardian. "He needed a word of reassurance. But he still went out and composed a neat half-century. His captain, Wally Hammond, said not a word before or after. Maybe that was why Podge spent so much time complimenting others." "He stood out as an unfailingly friendly and jovial presence," said the Daily Telegraph, "in a school where such qualities sometimes seemed in short supply."

BROOKES, DENNIS, who died on March 9, 2006, aged 90, was associated with Northamptonshire County Cricket Club for 74 years in every imaginable capacity, from teenage triallist to revered elder statesman. Many of his batting records for the county may never be broken; and his staunchness will surely never be matched - there or anywhere else.

Brookes was a Yorkshireman, from Kippax, though he arrived at Northampton as a 16-year-old in 1932, having been spotted batting in the leagues. Two years later, he was playing against Yorkshire, battling hard as his team lost their seventh match running. It became a familiar sensation. As the decade went by, the team got worse - failing to win at all for four years - but Brookes emerged as their most dependable batsman. He made a century, at Lord's, in his first county innings after the war (during which he was an RAF sergeant-instructor), and he became the regular opener. He reached 2,000 runs in 1946 and 1947, and was then picked for the rather weak MCC team that toured the West Indies under an ageing Gubby Allen.

Brookes made a century against Barbados and played in the Test there the following week: he scored ten and seven, chipped a finger while fielding, and never played for England again. A persistent rumour suggests that Allen took against Brookes, perhaps for not battling through the injury, and blocked his selection ever after. However, Freddie Brown was very influential in the early 1950s, both as captain and then chairman of selectors. Brown arrived at Northampton in 1949 and, with Brookes as his lieutenant, revived the county to remarkable effect - and Brown thought the world of Dennis. There was a lot of competition: Brookes was an average fielder from a small club, and perhaps a touch reluctant against the quickest bowling.

But in county cricket, he remained consistently superb, particularly when driving elegantly through the V against the spinners. According to one of the suffering bowlers, Robin Marlar, "Dennis and Len Hutton and Jack Robertson were the great technicians of the period." Brookes's team-mate Brian Reynolds remembered how he would carefully accumulate early in the day. "He'd say: 'After tea, when the bowlers get tired, then I'll dip my bread.' And he did."

Brookes became Northamptonshire's first professional captain in 1954, leading by quiet example. His batsmanship and his natural courtesy gave him authority over a rumbustious dressing-room, filled with characters from round the world and good enough to make the team runners-up in 1957, his last season as captain. And he scored 1,598 runs even in 1959, just before he retired as a 43-year-old.

Remarkably, though, Brookes's association with the county was not even close to its halfway point. He became Second XI captain, coach and assistant secretary, counting the pennies at a club that did have to count them. More importantly, for the next quarter-century he whispered cricket advice in the ear of the secretary, Ken Turner, to such effect that this little club regularly built teams capable of challenging for the Championship. He was also a magistrate, becoming chairman of the Northampton bench and giving local criminals the same stern but fair look he gave to youngsters who played across the line. From 1982 to 1985, he was club president and then "officer emeritus". He would sit in the committee room and dispense wisdom from an armchair: invariably for first-class; less invariably for one-day games; and never for Twenty20. His judgments remained sharp, and the shrewder players continued to seek out "Brookey" for advice.

He lived only six doors from the ground (though near the old Pool Gates, not those named after him) and every day - winter and summer - he would do a lap of the ground, latterly with a walking frame and usually followed by his cat, stopping for tea in the indoor school. The club were thinking of building him a new back gate into the car park to cut down his journey time. "I feel like I've lost a grandfather," said David Capel, now the first-team coach.

BUTLER, LESLIE CHARLES, who died on January 21, 2006, aged 71, had a long career as a left-arm spinner for Wellington. He played 53 matches in the 1950s and 1960s, starting when he was 17. He took eight for 50 (and 12 in the match) against New Zealand's Under-23 side 1965-66. Butler took 31 wickets that season in all, and helped Wellington win the Plunket Shield. He fought off a leg injury to bowl 100 overs in the deciding match against Auckland, then hit a six and a four when 12 were needed from the last over - and was carried shoulderhigh from the field by his team-mates. He made a century against Central Districts in 1960-61, when he also represented New Zealand in two unofficial Tests against a strong MCC team, returning figures of 16-11-8-2 in the second innings of the first game at Wellington, as the New Zealanders won by 133 runs.

BUTT, Lieutenant-General GHULAM SAFDAR, who died on May 1, 2006, aged 78, was the chairman of the Board of Control for Cricket in Pakistan from 1984 to 1988, a time which included the face-off between the England captain Mike Gatting and umpire Shakoor Rana. The England manager Peter Lush drove around 100 miles from Faisalabad to see the general in a bid to resolve the situation, only to be told he was out to dinner and would see him in the morning. By his own admission, Butt knew little about cricket, once asking the leg-spinner Abdul Qadir why he took such a short run-up compared to the West Indian fast bowlers.

CHISHOLM, RONALD HARRY EDDIE, died on November 23, 2006, aged 79. Ronnie Chisholm - the head of German at an Edinburgh high school - played 80 times for Scotland, a record at the time, between 1948 and 1971, and 61 of the matches were first-class. He scored 2,354 runs (average 23.54), all of them doggedly, though he was 43 before he reached his only first-class century: 105 against Ireland at Perth in 1970. Perhaps his finest innings was his 55 not out in a two-day game against the 1953 Australian tourists. But as his team-mate Hamish More said: "It didn't matter who he was playing against, Lindwall and Miller or Corstorphine Seconds, he always batted the same way, and he was utterly dependable."

DAWKES, GEORGE OWEN, who died on August 10, 2006, aged 86, was an important link in the chain of fine Derbyshire wicketkeepers. Dawkes started at Leicestershire, making his debut in 1937 as a 16-year-old, and played nearly every match in the two seasons before the war. On demob in 1947, he switched to Derbyshire, and kept his place until the start of the 1960s. He was a six-footer (tall for a wicketkeeper, especially in that era), very fit, and particularly good standing back, which was fortunate because Derbyshire were dependent on fast bowling, and Dawkes's reliability in collecting the nicks induced by Les Jackson's seamers was crucial. Of his 1,042 first-class victims, only 148 were stumpings, but 254 were c Dawkes b Jackson, including a hat-trick at Kidderminster in 1958. Dawkes was a respectable batsman, making a century against Hampshire at Burton in 1954. At his funeral, the vicar noted his three initials, and added: "He's gone to join No. 1 now."

DENNIS, JOHN NEWMAN, died on August 21, 2006, aged 93. A solicitor, Jack Dennis played 22 matches as an amateur for Essex in the six seasons leading up to the war, but passed fifty only once, with 53 against Sussex at Colchester in July 1937. The following week he captained them against Glamorgan.

DE ROHAN, MAURICE JOHN, AO, OBE, who died on October 5, 2006, aged 70, had been South Australia's Agent-General in London since 1998. He was also chairman of MCC's powerful Estates committee, where his background in civil engineering and business, plus his diplomatic connections, were all handy. De Rohan had been due to return to his native Adelaide to become Governor of South Australia in 2007. "He gave huge support to the club with many projects," said David Batts, MCC's deputy chief executive, "but his crowning glory was the pavilion refurbishment. He helped get it done on time, under budget. Maurice was a small man with a massive smile, but he did like things done with style, and was a terrier if they weren't."

DIMBLEBY, KENNETH GRAHAM, who died on September 2, 2006, aged 91, made two first-class centuries: 104 for Eastern Province against Western Province at Port Elizabeth in 1936-37, then, ten years later, he returned to St George's Park with Western Province and scored 127 for them against his old team. Both times he shared hundred partnerships with his brother, Desmond.

DIPROSE, NOEL VERTIGAN, who died on February 26, 2006, aged 83, played 15 times for Tasmania between 1947-48 and 1956-57. He was a tall, inexhaustible medium-pacer who could swing and cut the ball skilfully, even on unpromising surfaces. He took seven for 83 against Victoria at Hobart in 1950-51, and 744 wickets in a long career with the Hobart club Glenorchy.

DRURY, LEONARD H., who died on August 13, 2005, aged 77, was a legspinner who took 41 wickets at 34.90 for Griqualand West and Orange Free State. He made 51 and took five for 59, both career-bests, for the Griquas against North- Eastern Transvaal at Pretoria in 1955-56.

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This section records the lives of those who died during 2006 and were: