Alec Bedser - Playing Career

Playing Career

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.

John Kay

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, including 7 in the first innings, 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".

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". 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."

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 suffering 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.