Cricket the Bedser way

Sir Alec Bedser took 236 wickets in 51 Tests

by BBC Sport Online' s Charlie Henderson

It is amazing to think that the Bedser twins made their name with the ball instead of the bat.

The way the pair dead bat a question, as a batsman would a venomous ball exploding off a length, suggests at years of practice honed over time.

Alec and Eric Bedser attend at least one day of every county match at the Oval during an English summer.

  The Bedser twins

Born: 4 July 1918

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Alec Victor Bedser

Test career
51 matches
714 runs @ 12.75
Highest score: 79
236 wkts @ 24.90
Best bowling: 7-44

1st class career
485 matches
5,735 runs @ 14.51
Highest score: 126
1,924 wkts @ 20.41
Best bowling: 8-18

1947: Wisden Cricketer of the Year

1996: Knighted for services to cricket

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Eric Arthur Bedser

1st class career
457 matches
14,716 runs @ 24.00
Highest score: 163
833 wkts @ 24.95
Best bowling: 7-33

Surely they are excited at the prospect of an Ashes summer and watching a fast developing Surrey side defend their county championship.

"Not exactly," Alec says. "I don't get very excited about anything."

"I'm a bit too old to get excited," echoes Eric. "At 82 you don't really get excited - I just take things as they come."

The cricket that the pair played is not the same game that they watch today.

For one, the outspoken Alec believes that there is far too much Test cricket in the modern game.

He thinks a lot of the players are getting "stale".

But he also disagrees with the system of central contracts which are designed to prevent burn-out, particularly amongst the opening bowlers, a position he once held with distinction in the England side.

"I don't agree with it, but it's a sign of the times.

Eric swings the bat

"Everyone should be with their county and I think that if you expect full money from your county you should play there.

"We used to play a Test match on the Tuesday and turn out for Surrey on the Wednesday.

"We wanted to play for Surrey and we wanted to win the championship for Surrey."

Surrey and the championship - that remains a constant.

When the Bedsers plied their trade on the Oval square Surrey were a force as they are now.

They are both equivocal that the seven successive county championship victories they helped Surrey win from 1952 make up one of the highlights, if an extended one, in their careers.

I see no reason why Surrey shouldn't do well - they've got the talent but will have to rely on Saqlain

  Alec Bedser

"The present lot are a good side but they've got a long way to go," Alec says of Adam Hollioake's men.

"They'll struggle to be as good as we were," Eric agrees.

Eric also believes that anyone in the present team, or since the war for that matter, struggles to match his brother as a bowler.

While Eric bowled off breaks on the county circuit, his brother stepped up to the international stage after the Second World War, during which the two Dunkirk evacuees served in Italy and North Africa.

Alec won 51 Test caps and his controlled medium fast bowling carried a weak post-war England attack.

My greatest moment was getting on the playing staff at the Oval when I was 18 - I just loved playing

  Eric Bedser

After not touching a bat or ball for three years he made his debut in 1946 against India and announced himself with 11 wickets in each of his first two matches.

But it was against Australia that the opening bowler made his name and really enjoyed himself.

He made his highest Test score of 79 against the touring Australians as a nightwatchman in 1948, and five years later he recorded his best international bowling figures of 7-44 against them.

In that Coronation summer of 1953 Alec also beat Maurice Tate's record of 39 Australian wickets in an Ashes series.

"I had wonderful times against Australia. It was always tough but I liked it."

"I'm also the only man to have got Don Bradman out twice for nought in Test match cricket," Alec recalls with pride.

Alec at full speed

He also got Bradman out six consecutive times and the two knights remained good friends until Sir Don's recent death.

"I didn't have a trick, I just always tried to get someone out, I had to get him out and I bowled some good balls at him," Alec modestly says.

But his ability to combine steady late in-swing with excellent leg cutters led Bradman to describe one delivery that ended an innings in 1946/47 as the best that he had ever faced.

An improving England side would readily accommodate such talent for this summer's Ashes series as they try to blunt the threat, of among others, the Waugh twins.

But cricket's first great twins are confident that the 2001 Ashes contest will be "fairly even".

So a summer of cricket lies ahead and no doubt the pair will take things as they come.

And who knows, during the final Test at the Oval in August and as the county season nears a conclusion, even they might have cause to get excited.