Martin Horton

HORTON, MARTIN JOHN, who died on April 3, 2011, aged 76, was a key member of the Worcestershire side that won the County Championship for the first time in 1964 and repeated the achievement a year later. An opening batsman and off-spinner, he contributed greatly to the happy spirit of the team. Born in Worcester, the son of a publican who had been a champion boxer, Horton joined the county's groundstaff in April 1949, just before his 15th birthday, spending much of the summer selling scorecards, rolling the outfield and fetching tea from the local cafe. The following year he was the leading run-scorer in the Second Eleven. He had a spell in the first team in 1952 but his breakthrough came, after two years of National Service, in 1955. In the traditional season opener against the tourists, he took nine for 56 in the South African second innings, inflicting what was to be their only defeat outside the Tests. At this stage he was a middle-order batsman, and in all matches that summer he scored 1,296 runs and took 103 wickets.

Horton was not quite a cricketer of Test class. As a bowler, although he had an easy rhythm and a sharp brain, he lacked penetration on hard, true pitches. And despite scoring an exceptional 2,468 runs in 1959, he had a short backlift and a punchy, bottom-handed style that did not find favour with the purists at Lord's. It was therefore a shock, both to the commentators and Horton himself, when he was selected to play against India in the First Test of 1959. England had returned from a disastrous tour of Australia and were looking for fresh faces, not least an off-spinner to replace the ageing Jim Laker. Horton scored 58, and took two cheap wickets in the Second Test, but he had not convinced the cognoscenti, and returned to Worcester. "I thought I was very lucky to play," he said in later life, "but perhaps unlucky not to play a little longer."

Promoted to open, he had his best summer in 1961. Between April 29 and September 5, Horton hit 1,808 runs in 66 innings and took 101 wickets in 896.2 overs, a workload almost unimaginable in the modern game. No other specialist opener since the war has done the double, and through it all he kept a steady, good-humoured outlook on life. "When he came home at night," his wife Margaret said, "I wouldn't know whether he'd scored nought or a hundred."

A cracked kneecap, caused by a skiddy bouncer from Kent's Fred Ridgway, hampered Horton's later years, and he retired from county cricket in 1966. He emigrated to New Zealand, where he played for Northern Districts but, more importantly, was national coach for 17 years, responsible for the game at all levels. Jeremy Coney, the former Test captain, remembered: "New Zealand cricket had such meagre resources. It was almost run out of a garage, and he just got on with the job, calm and relaxed, with no ego. Everybody liked him." Horton's part in their progress was little noticed, but in due course New Zealand became a cricketing force, going 12 years from 1979 without losing a home series.

He returned to England in 1984 to coach at the Royal Grammar School in Worcester, where Dean Headley was an early prote ́ge ́. He served for some years as a wise and knowledgeable chairman of cricket at Worcestershire, and ran their Old Players' Association. Horton had fallen in love with cricket at the age of 12, when taken to New Road to see the Indian tourists, and his enchantment did not dim. He watched every day he could, and attended the local cricket societies in winter. "If I could have," he used to say, "I would have played for nothing." Few cricketers of his era were as popular.