Recalled To The Test Team
His form in 1962 – 136 wickets and 1,238 runs – saw Titmus recalled to Test cricket, and he played in the third and fourth Tests against Pakistan. For his performances that year (including a career-best nine for 52 against Cambridge University) he was made one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in the 1963 version of the Almanack. Titmus went to Australia for the 1962-63 Ashes series and made his highest first-class century of 137 not out vs South Australia. He played in all five Tests, and took more wickets than any other English bowler; 21 at 29.33, including a Test career best 7 for 79 in the Third Test and 5 for 103 in the Fifth, both at Sydney, and making 59 not out in the Fourth Test at Adelaide.
For five years Titmus remained an automatic choice for England, and he produced some outstanding displays, not least in India in 1963/64, when in the course of a five-Test series (packed into just six weeks) he picked up 27 wickets to help relieve the monotony as every game finished in a draw. In 1964 he opened the batting against Australia with Geoff Boycott at Trent Bridge after John Edrich was injured. Meanwhile he continued to be invaluable for Middlesex, racking up 100 wickets in most years and contributing handy knocks with the bat, as well as captaining the county side between 1965 and 1968. He toured Australia again for the 1965-66 Ashes series; making 258 runs (64.50), but taking only 9 wickets (57.44) and in the Third Test at Sydney he took 4/40 as England spun their way to their biggest victory in Australia since 1912.
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“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
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