| Personal information | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Alec Victor Bedser | |||
| Born | 4 July 1918 Reading, Berkshire, England |
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| Died | 4 April 2010 (aged 91) |
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| Height | 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) | |||
| Batting style | Right-handed | |||
| Bowling style | Right arm medium-fast | |||
| Relations | Eric Bedser (twin brother) | |||
| International information | ||||
| National side | England | |||
| 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 | ||||
| Competition | Tests | First-class | ||
| Matches | 51 | 485 | ||
| Runs scored | 714 | 5,735 | ||
| Batting average | 12.75 | 14.51 | ||
| 100s/50s | 0/1 | 1/13 | ||
| Top score | 79 | 126 | ||
| Balls bowled | 15,918 | 106,062 | ||
| Wickets | 236 | 1,924 | ||
| Bowling average | 24.89 | 20.41 | ||
| 5 wickets in innings | 15 | 96 | ||
| 10 wickets in match | 5 | 16 | ||
| Best bowling | 7/44 | 8/18 | ||
| Catches/stumpings | 26/– | 289/– | ||
| Source: CricketArchive, 7 January 2009 | ||||
Sir Alec Victor Bedser, CBE (4 July 1918–4 April 2010) was a professional English cricketer. He was the chairman of selectors for the English national cricket team, and the president of Surrey County Cricket Club. He is widely regarded as one of the best English cricketers of the 20th century.
He was an outstanding right-arm medium-fast bowler for Surrey and England in a first-class playing career that spanned twenty-one years. He took 1924 first-class wickets in 485 matches. In 51 Test matches for England he took 236 wickets.
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Bedser was born a few minutes after his identical twin brother Eric (1918–2006) in Reading, Berkshire, where his father was stationed with the Royal Air Force. Within six months the family moved to Horsell, Surrey, where, at the age of seven, the brothers played their first organised cricket. Over the next decade they played together for Monument Hill School and Woking Cricket Club. After joining a local firm of solicitors, the twins were spotted practising in the nets for Woking Cricket Club by Surrey coach Alan Peach, and he recruited them to the staff at The Oval in 1938. A year later they made their first-class débuts for the county. Their careers were interrupted in 1939, when they joined the RAF to serve in World War II: they saw action at Dunkirk and later served in North Africa, Italy and Austria, both narrowly escaping from being shot in France.[1] They were demobilised in 1946.
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 rejected l.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.[2]
Alec Bedser's performances during war-time cricket matches were impressive: in games for the British RAF he took 6 wickets for 27 runs (including a hat-trick) against the West Indies and 9 for 36, featuring another hat-trick, against a Metropolitan Police team.
In his first full season for Surrey, in 1946, he passed 100 wickets before July and established himself in the England Test team. In each of his first two Tests, against the visiting Indians, he took eleven wickets: 11 for 139 in his début at Lord's, includng 7 in the first innings,[3] and 11 for 96 in the next game at Manchester. His amazing season resulted in his nomination as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year for 1947. He was selected for the 1946-47 Ashes series in Australia and for most of the next decade "carried England's bowling attack".[4]
In Australia he was overbowled and exhausted and found that his natural in-swingers were liked by Australian leg-side batsmen like Sid 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".[5] Don Bradman wrote "the ball with which Alec Bedser bowled me in the Adelaide 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]
In the 1950-51 Ashes series he began his dominance of Australian batsmen, taking 30 wickets (16.06) and 10/105 in the Fifth Test when he ended Australians 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 an average of 17.48 at home to Australia, including career-best match figures of 14 for 99 in the Nottingham Test. In the first Test of the 1954–5 tour of Australia he was usffering from shingles and took 1/131 as seven catches were dropped off his bowling, including Arthur Morris (153) before he had scored - and England lost by an innings. He was subsequently diagnosed as suffering from shingles and despite a recovery and a green wicket tailor-made for his bowling in the second Test he was dropped from the side. He was recalled for one test in 1955 against South Africa.
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. He was England's post-war bowling spearhead. He had 14 new ball partners, and took five wickets in an innings 15 times and ten wickets in a match 5 times. His entire first-class career spanned 485 matches, in which he helped Surrey to eight County Championships between 1950 and 1958, and 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.
After retiring from playing cricket in 1960, Bedser served as a national team selector for twenty-three years and was chairman of selectors from 1969 to 1981. He was on the board of selectors who controversially left Basil d'Oliveira out of the England team for 1968's tour of South Africa.[7] England won ten of the 18 series while Bedser was chairman of selectors.[7] Bedser also managed two England overseas tours. Bedser was made president of Surrey in 1987 - recognition of his outstanding contribution to the county's cricketing fortunes over the previous five decades. He was knighted for his services to cricket in 1996. In October 2004 Bedser was selected in 'England's Greatest Post-War XI' by The Wisden Cricketer, an authoritative monthly cricket magazine. In May 2009, Christopher Martin-Jenkins ranked Bedser 29th in picking his 100 greatest cricketers of all time.[8]
Neither Alec nor his brother ever married. They lived together in Woking until Eric's death in 2006. Sir Alec Bedser died in hospital in Woking[9] on 4 April 2010 after a short illness.[10] Among those to pay tribute to the more famous of the two brothers was former Prime Minister and well-known cricket lover John 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."[11] For three months following the death of Arthur McIntyre on 26 December 2009, Bedser was the oldest surviving England Test cricketer. On Bedser's death, that distinction passed to Reg Simpson.
Outside of cricket, Bedser was a founding member of the right-wing pressure group The Freedom Association during the 1970s.[12][13][14]
Test debut: vs India, Lord's, 1946
Last Test: vs South Africa, Manchester, 1955
| Records | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Clarrie Grimmett |
World Record – Most Career Wickets in Test cricket 236 wickets (24.89) in 51 Tests Held record 24th July, 1953 to 26th January, 1963 |
Succeeded by Brian Statham |