 Bedser (right) with his twin brother Eric in 1946 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Alec Victor Bedser | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | (1918-07-04)4 July 1918 Reading, Berkshire, England | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 4 April 2010(2010-04-04) (aged 91) Woking,Surrey, England | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Batting | Right-handed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bowling | Right armmedium-fast | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Relations | Eric Bedser (twin brother) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| International information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| National side | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Test debut (cap 311) | 22 June 1946 v India | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Test | 12 July 1955 v South Africa | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Domestic team information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Years | Team | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1939–1960 | Surrey | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Career statistics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Source:CricketArchive,7 January 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sir Alec Victor BedserCBE (4 July 1918 – 4 April 2010) was an English professionalcricketer, primarily amedium-fast bowler. He is widely regarded as one of the best English cricketers of the 20th century.
Bedser playedfirst-class cricket forSurrey from 1939 to 1960 alongside his identical twin brotherEric. He took 1924 first-classwickets in 485 matches. He playedTest cricket forEngland from 1946 to 1955, taking 236 wickets in 51 Test matches. He passedClarrie Grimmett'sworld record for Test wickets in 1953. He held the record until his final tally was passed byBrian Statham in 1963.
After retirement as an active cricketer, Bedser became the chairman of selectors for the English national cricket team, and was the president of Surrey County Cricket Club. He wasknighted in the1997 New Year Honours.
Bedser was born inReading, Berkshire, ten minutes after hisidentical twin brotherEric (1918–2006). His father was a bricklayer, but had been stationed in Reading with theRoyal Air Force during the First World War. The brothers remained inseparable through their lives: they often dressed identically, and shared a bank account; neither married.[1]
The family moved toHorsell,Surrey, where, at the age of seven, the brothers played their first organised cricket. The family moved toKnaphill and then to a house they helped their father to build inWoking. They were educated at Maybury Junior School and then Monument Hill Central School in Woking. Over the next decade, the twin brothers played cricket together for Monument Hill School and Woking Cricket Club. They also both played football for Monument Hill School, both asfull backs.[1][2]
After leaving school, Eric and Alec became clerks at the same firm of solicitors inLincoln's Inn Fields.[1] They were spotted practising in the nets for Woking Cricket Club by Surrey coachAlan Peach, and he recruited them to the staff atthe Oval in 1938.[2] Initially, they were bothmedium-fast bowlers, but (after Alec won a toss of coin) Eric became anoff spinner instead.[1] They made their first-class débuts for Surrey against Oxford University in June 1939.[1]
Their cricket careers were soon interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. They both joined theRAF police, and were sent to France with theBritish Expeditionary Force.[2] They both narrowly escaped being shot before being evacuated fromDunkirk, and later served inNorth Africa,Italy andAustria.[3] They were demobilised in 1946.[2]
Alec Bedser founded England's eventual success. He toiled for hours without complaint, and never once looked annoyed at the missing of a catch, or at a rejectedl.b.w. appeal. A great bowler, and an example to all who aspire to cricketing fame. The schoolboys who cheered him, and the elderly folk who applauded politely, all realised one thing. In Alec Bedser England had the best bowler Australia had seen for years, and friend and foe alike admitted the fact.
Alec Bedser's performances during war-time cricket matches were impressive: in games for the RAF he took 6 wickets for 27 runs (including ahat-trick) againstthe West Indies and 9 for 36 (featuring another hat-trick) against aMetropolitan Police team.[2]
In his first full season for Surrey, in 1946, he passed 100 wickets before July and established himself as a bowler in theEnglandTest team.[5] In each of his first two Tests, against the visitingIndians, he took eleven wickets: 11 for 139 in his début atLord's, including 7 in the first innings, and 11 for 96 in the next game atOld Trafford,Manchester.[6] His amazing season resulted in his nomination as aWisden Cricketer of the Year for 1947. He was selected for the1946–47 Ashes series in Australia and for most of the next decade "carried England's bowling attack".[7]
In Australia he was overbowled and exhausted and found that his natural in-swingers were liked by Australian leg-side batsmen likeSid Barnes. To counter this he gripped the ball across the seam like a spinner and the result was an in-swinging leg-break which would be known as Bedser's "Special Ball".[8]Don Bradman wrote "the ball with which Alec Bedser bowled me in theAdelaide Test Match was, I think, the finest ever to take my wicket. It must have come three-quarters of the way straight on my off-stump, then suddenly dipped in to pitch on the leg stump, only to turn off the pitch and hit the middle and off stumps."[6][9]
Meanwhile, his brother Eric became an all-rounder in the Surrey team, concentrating on his batting as the team also included spinners such asJim Laker andTony Lock.[6] The Bedser twins were difficult to tell apart, both 6'3" tall and just over 15 stone.[2] Playing for Surrey against an England representative team in 1946, they are reputed to have shared an over – Alec bowling the first three balls and then swapping with Eric fielding at mid-on for Eric to complete the over – without being detected by the batsman,Frank Woolley.[10]
In the1950-51 Ashes series, Alec began his dominance of Australian batsmen, taking 30 wickets at an average of 16.06 and 10 for 105 in the Fifth Test when he ended Australia's unbeaten run of 26 Tests since 1938. In 1953 at 35, an age by which many fast bowlers have retired from first-class cricket, Bedser demonstrated his longevity by helping England regain the Ashes. He took 39 wickets at anaverage of 17.48 at home to Australia, including career-best match figures of 14 for 99 in theNottingham Test.[6]
Bedser founded his success on accuracy of line and length, bowled at a medium pace from a short run-up, using his powerful shoulders and large hands to achieve sharpinswing and surprising batsmen with occasionalleg cutters.
Bedser was aged 36 by the first Test of the1954–55 tour of Australia. He took 1 for 131 as seven catches were dropped off his bowling, includingArthur Morris (153) before he had scored – and England lost by an innings. He was subsequently diagnosed as suffering fromshingles; despite recovering from this, and with a green wicket in the second Test that would have suited his bowling, he was dropped from the side, and watched as the youngerFrank Tyson andBrian Statham bowled England to victory. He was recalled for one Test against South Africa in 1955.[6]
In a Test career extending from 1946 to 1955, Bedser played 51 matches and took 236 wickets (average 24.89), at the time the most wickets taken in Test cricket.[6] He was England's post-war bowling spearhead. He had 14 new ball partners, and tookfive wickets in an innings 15 times andten wickets in a match five times. His entire first-class career spanned 485 matches, in which he helped Surrey to eightCounty Championships between 1950 and 1958. Bedser occasionally captained the side in place ofStuart Surridge orPeter May. He took 100 wickets in a county season eleven times, figures that place him high amongst the game's greats. He took five or more wickets in an innings 96 times, and ten wickets or more in a match 16 times. Bedser retired from cricket in 1960, and his brother Eric retired in 1962.[1][6]
After retiring from playing cricket, Bedser went into business with his brother. Among other business interests, they co-operated with Ronald Straker in a successful stationery firm, Straker-Bedser, which was later taken over byRyman in 1977.[1]
Bedser served as a national team selector from 1962 to 1985, and was chairman of selectors from 1968 to 1981. He was on the board of selectors who controversially leftBasil d'Oliveira out of the England team for 1968's tour of South Africa.[11] England won ten of the 18 series while Bedser was chairman of selectors.[11] Bedser also managed two England overseas tours. Bedser was made president of Surrey in 1987 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the county's cricketing fortunes over the previous five decades. In October 2004 Bedser was selected in 'England's Greatest Post-War XI' byThe Wisden Cricketer, an authoritative monthly cricket magazine.[12] In May 2009,Christopher Martin-Jenkins ranked Bedser 29th in picking his 100 greatest cricketers of all time.[13]
Outside of cricket, Bedser was a founding member during the 1970s ofthe Freedom Association, a right-wingpressure group that advocated the maintenance of sporting relations with South Africa during the apartheid era.[14][15][16]
He was appointed an Officer of theOrder of the British Empire (OBE) in 1964, advanced to Commander (CBE) in 1982, and in 1997 he wasknighted for services to cricket, the first England bowler to receive the honour and the last untilSir James Anderson in 2025.[6]
Neither Alec nor his brother Eric ever married. They lived together in Woking until Eric's death in 2006. Sir Alec Bedser died in hospital in Woking[17] on 4 April 2010 after a short illness.[18] Among those to pay tribute to the more famous of the two brothers was former Prime Minister, well-known cricket lover and lifelong Surrey supporterJohn Major, who said: "Alec Bedser was one of the greatest medium-fast bowlers of all time. He was also one of the great thinkers about cricket and his wisdom was one of the great untapped resources of the modern game."[17] For three months following the death ofArthur McIntyre on 26 December 2009, Bedser was the oldest surviving England Test cricketer. On Bedser's death, that distinction passed toReg Simpson.[6]
Test debut: vsIndia,Lord's,Middlesex, 1946
Last Test: vsSouth Africa,Old Trafford,Manchester, 1955
| Records | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Most career wickets in Test cricket 236 wickets (24.89) in 51 Tests Held record from 24 July 1953 to 26 January 1963 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
