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English cricketer

Robert Walter Vivian Robins (3 June 1906 – 12 December 1968) was an English cricketer and cricket administrator, who played for Cambridge University, Middlesex, and England. A right handed batsman and right arm leg break and googly bowler, he was known for his attacking style of play. He captained both his county and his country; after the Second World War, he served several terms as a Test selector. Born into a cricketing family, Robins attended Highgate School, where he earned a reputation as one of the outstanding schoolboy cricketers of his generation. He made his debut in first class cricket, for Middlesex, in 1925. At Cambridge he won cricket "blues" in each of his three years, 1926 to 1928. He played his first Test match, against South Africa, in 1929, and thereafter played intermittently for England in each of the seasons up to 1937 – he played all his cricket as an amateur, which constrained his availability for both county and country. He toured Australia as vice captain to G. O. Allen in 1936–37, and assumed the captaincy of the international side for three matches in 1937. He captained Middlesex from 1935 to 1938, again after the war in 1946 and 1947, and for a final season in 1950. In 1947 he led Middlesex to the County Championship. Robins was a member of the Test selectors' panel in 1946–48, in 1954, and finally in 1962–64 when he acted as chairman. He was controversially involved in an unsuccessful attempt, in 1954, to replace the current England captain, Len Hutton, with the young and inexperienced David Sheppard. He was a strong advocate of "brighter cricket", to an extent that sometimes failed to recognise the realities of international cricket in the postwar era, and put him at odds with the players of a later generation. This problem was evident when Robins served as manager of the touring team to the West Indies in 1959–60, when his forthright, autocratic approach adversely affected his relationship with the team's captain and vice captain, Peter May and Colin Cowdrey. Whatever his difficulties in coming to terms with the cricket of a later era, Robins was widely recognised as one of the most dynamic cricketers of his time, a fact that was acknowledged in the tributes paid after his death, in 1968, by his former playing colleagues. His son, Charles Robins, played for Middlesex from 1953 to 1960, as a leg spin and googly bowler in the manner of his father.

Robins was born in Stafford on 3 June 1906. His father was Vivian Harry Robins (1880–1963), who played Minor Counties cricket for Staffordshire before the First World War as a leg break bowler and right handed batsman – characteristics which his son would also develop. In 1917 the family moved to London, where Walter Robins attended Highgate School. He was coached at cricket first by his father, to whom he would later attribute much of his eventual success, and, at Highgate, by the former England player Albert Knight. He also played club cricket for East Molesey. Attending Highgate from April 1921 until July 1925, Robins was four years in the football XI (captain for the last two), three years in the Eton Fives VI (captain for the last two) and was in the cricket first XI from 1922 to 1925, again being captain in his last two years; in 1925 he scored 816 runs for a batting average of 62.76, and took 60 wickets at a bowling average of 15.18. These figures included a score of 206 against Aldenham School; his all round performances made him, according to Wisden, "one of the great schoolboy players of the year". In the summer of 1925, before entering Cambridge University, Robins made his debut in first class cricket, when he appeared for Middlesex in the County Championship. The match was on 19 August, against Worcestershire. He was out for 0 in his only innings, and did not bowl.

In its 1969 obituary tribute, Wisden acknowledges Robins as "one of the most dynamic cricketers of his time", who maintained an "aggressively enterprising" attitude towards the game: "Impatient of dull cricket, Robins wasted few scoring opportunities as a batsman, employing his nimble footwork and flexible wrists to the full, especially in cutting and driving". There was some early criticism of his effectiveness as a bowler – he sometimes tried to bowl too fast, and was erratic in maintaining length – but Wilde's analysis of English Test bowlers of leg breaks and googlies shows Robins, at international level, to have been one of the most effective of this kind in terms both of wickets taken and of cost per wicket. There were divided opinions on Robins's effectiveness as a selector. Doug Insole, who served with him between 1962 and 1964, considered that his judgement of a player was "excellent". Others were less sure; Wilde records that during Robins's first stint as a selector, 1946–48, the Australians were dismissive of his judgement, an opinion apparently shared by the former England captain Bob Wyatt, who "would have liked more intelligent people on the committee". Gibson is critical of Robins's efforts to replace Hutton as captain in 1954, an action which Wilde describes as "disloyal and unhelpful". It seems that Robins was not particularly popular with the players of a later generation, and that he made little effort to understand them. According to Wilde, Robins failed to recognise the extent to which, in the postwar era, international cricket had changed from his own heyday in the 1930s. It had, says Wilde, become much more tough and attritional, hence Robins's repeated calls for more attacking, brighter cricket were often inappropriate and doomed to failure. Nevertheless, in the view of Billy Griffith, the cricket administrator and long serving secretary of the MCC, Robins's "tremendous enthusiasm and deep knowledge of the game and its history made him the complete cricketer". Robins's Middlesex colleague Ian Peebles, who succeeded him as county captain in 1939, described him as "the most enthusiastic and joyous cricketer I played with".