by Arunabha Sengupta
In Australia, he was known as the Other Half.
As a big stand developed during the 1946-47 series, the barrackers targeted his twin brother. “You’ll never get ’em out, send for Eric.”
Years later journalist Clif Cary reported a conversation between two old Test cricketers in Melbourne.
“A Bedser at each end with the new ball would have given our chaps a headache or two,” said Ian Craig.
“Heaven forbid,” responded Lindsay Hassett.
“Australia should be thankful that Jim Laker played for Surrey and restricted Eric’s chances. Eric was a high-class bowler as well,” said Ian Craig.
Of course, if both had bowled medium pace, it would have been a nightmare for umpires as well. The one on song on that particular day could well have continued to bowl from both ends without anyone being wiser. They were that identical.
They never really tried to confuse umpires and scorers. But there were one or two muddles. Once at Northampton, Alec was told to bat before Eric for tactical reasons. Eric being the much more accomplished batsman, the scorer, ex-England wicketkeeper Herbert Strudwick, noted Bedser, AV b Partridge 10; Bedser, EA c Greenwood b Merritt 25. It should have been the other way around.
On another occasion, against Lancashire, Stuart Surridge took Alec along to open the innings and hold fort the last few minutes of the day. He was caught and bowled Tattershall. The bowler believed he had the wicket of Eric, who was a fairly regular opener. If Lancashire’s Cyril Washbrook had not been a close enough friend of Alec to have recognized him, the following day Eric might have been charged with trying to bat twice.
Born 10 minutes apart, they grew up together, in difficult circumstances, hardworking and inseparable. Their father was a bricklayer and played cricket at Woodham Hall, and the twins often helped out at the building sites.
At school, the connection between the Bedser twins was almost supernatural. Even when separated into two different rooms, they made the same mistakes in their schoolwork. Both sang for the choir at All Saints, Woodham, and the cricket-crazy vicar Rev RT Jourdian organised matches in which the two excelled.
At 14, the boys began work as clerks in a solicitor’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. It was during this apprenticeship that they joined a cricket school at Woking, recently opened by the former Surrey all-rounder Alan Peach. Both the Bedsers bowled fast-medium and impressed the coach.
It was at this juncture that the twins decided that there should be more variation in the bowling attack boasted by the Bedser brotherhood. They tossed a coin and Alec Bedser won. From that day, Eric stuck to off-breaks.
If the flip of the coin had gone the other way, would Eric Bedser have ended the world-renowned pace bowler? One wonders.
He did not do too badly for himself. A member of that supreme Surrey side which boasted the Bedser twins, the spin twins Lock and Laker, Loader, May, Surridge and later Barrington, Eric Bedser had a splendid first-class career.
833 wickets at 24.95 were impressive returns by any scale. He also scored 14716 runs with 10 hundreds, averaging 24. He was not the world class bowler as his twin, but was certainly the better batsman. As already mentioned, he often opened the innings.
Eric Bedser was born on 4 July 1918, 10 minutes before Alec.