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The more one saw of John Edrich, the more heroic he appeared
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RH156RH
Jan 6, 2021, 10:28:32 AM1/6/21
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Telegraph
The more one saw of John Edrich, the more heroic he appeared
Since Edrich died I have been trying to recall when he first entered my consciousness, that heroic embodiment of guts and grind
SIMON HEFFER
6 January 2021 • 8:00am
Simon Heffer
John Edrich
John Edrich was one of England and Surrey's finest CREDIT: HULTON ARCHIVE
Like many of a certain age I was saddened on Boxing Day to read of the death of John Edrich. Some considered him an inelegant batsman, but there was something heroic and determined about him that embodied the guts and grind necessary to produce the glamour of professional cricket in the decades immediately after the last war. And, indeed, the more one saw of Edrich, the more heroic he appeared: culminating in that brutal last session at Old Trafford in the 1976 Test against West Indies, of which more later.
Yet there had, in the late 1960s, been something completely God’s-in-his-heaven-and-all’s-right-with-the-world about the sight of Boycott and Edrich going out to open the batting for England.
It may not often have been pretty but, my word, it was effective. It was no surprise, among the many tributes paid to Edrich after his death at the age of 83, that Sir Geoffrey should have said what a superlative opening partner he was. Going out into the middle with him, a partner would have felt instinctively that it would be a long time before they were separated.
Read more at
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/01/06/one-saw-john-edrich-heroic-appeared/
Since Edrich died I have been trying to recall when he first entered my consciousness. I was too young to witness his herculean 310 not out against New Zealand at Leeds in 1965, when he was apparently so impossible to bowl at that had England not declared he almost certainly would have overtaken Gary Sobers’s record Test score of 365 not out, made seven years earlier for West Indies, and gone on to make 400 in a Test match nearly 40 years before Brian Lara got there.
The more one saw of John Edrich, the more heroic he appeared
Since Edrich died I have been trying to recall when he first entered my consciousness, that heroic embodiment of guts and grind
SIMON HEFFER
6 January 2021 • 8:00am
Simon Heffer
John Edrich
John Edrich was one of England and Surrey's finest CREDIT: HULTON ARCHIVE
Like many of a certain age I was saddened on Boxing Day to read of the death of John Edrich. Some considered him an inelegant batsman, but there was something heroic and determined about him that embodied the guts and grind necessary to produce the glamour of professional cricket in the decades immediately after the last war. And, indeed, the more one saw of Edrich, the more heroic he appeared: culminating in that brutal last session at Old Trafford in the 1976 Test against West Indies, of which more later.
Yet there had, in the late 1960s, been something completely God’s-in-his-heaven-and-all’s-right-with-the-world about the sight of Boycott and Edrich going out to open the batting for England.
It may not often have been pretty but, my word, it was effective. It was no surprise, among the many tributes paid to Edrich after his death at the age of 83, that Sir Geoffrey should have said what a superlative opening partner he was. Going out into the middle with him, a partner would have felt instinctively that it would be a long time before they were separated.
Read more at
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/01/06/one-saw-john-edrich-heroic-appeared/
Since Edrich died I have been trying to recall when he first entered my consciousness. I was too young to witness his herculean 310 not out against New Zealand at Leeds in 1965, when he was apparently so impossible to bowl at that had England not declared he almost certainly would have overtaken Gary Sobers’s record Test score of 365 not out, made seven years earlier for West Indies, and gone on to make 400 in a Test match nearly 40 years before Brian Lara got there.
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