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I’d latched onto Middlesex from a very young age because my first sporting hero, even before Ferenc Puskas, was Denis Compton. As a kid I would read any available scrap of news on Compton and his Middlesex team.
I can still hear Brian Johnson’s frantic England’s won the Ashes as Compton pulled the winning boundary against the Aussies.
I never saw him bat live but I wanted to watch Middlesex at Lord’s, hence visits in 1959, 1960 and 1961 – although I do recall one of the annual trysts with Surrey was at the Oval.
But certainly August 1961 was at Lord’s and a new hero was born – Middlesex all-rounder Ron Hooker.
We were there on the opening day and Surrey, after deciding to bat first, were bowled out for 120.
Hooker took 5-30 in 17 overs removing the cream of the Surrey batting, including Ken Barrington and Peter May.
It was a star-studded Surrey side which also contained the likes of Micky Stewart, John Edrich, Tony Lock and Eric Bedser – but whose best days in the Championship had all been in the 1950’s when the county won seven in a row and shared one with Lancashire.
Middlesex always seemed to finish seventh, and in this derby they lost by 29 runs.
But I can still rhyme off their players then as if it was today’s team – probably because I had the autographs from that visit in 1961.
My dad and I went for a walk at the lunch interval, leaving my mother with her knitting. Near the back of the pavilion Bob Gale was outside in his whites for some reason and struck up a conversation with my dad.
Next minute he had disappeared inside and came back out with a scorecard with all the players’ autographs on it.
I asked dad what he had said and he had told the Middlesex opener (much later to be club president) that we had come all the way down from Cumberland to watch the game and I was a fan.
Bob Gale, Eric Russell, Peter Parfitt, Ted Clark, Fred Titmus, Don Bennett, J. T. Murray, Ron Hooker, Ian Bedford, Colin Drybrough and Alan Moss.
Sorry to say I no longer have that autographed scorecard. Along with a host of football programmes, they have gradually disappeared over several house moves in the intervening years.
