The Bedsers: Twinning Triumphs

"To know one is to know the other, for they are as identical in mind as they are in form." So writes the former Prime Minister and Surrey president, John Major, in the foreword to Alan Hill's new biography of the Woking twins, available from CricShop at £15.99.

From their birth, ten minutes apart, (Eric is the senior) on the 4th July 1918, the lives of these two excellent cricketers are traced through their key presence in the great Surrey team of the 1950s, which won seven championships, to Alec's post-playing career in cricket administration, in which he was chairman of the England selectors.

There is much of interest, to those who remember the Bedsers' playing days and also to a younger generation who followed the mixed fortunes of the England team in the 1970s and early 1980s. In his account of Ian Botham's resignation as England's captain after the 1981 Lord's Test against Australia, Hill recounts the events that led to Botham's anger when Alec Bedser revealed that the selectors had decided to sack him anyway.

Bedser, a plain-speaking man, recalls: "We decided, reluctantly, during the match at Lord's, that we had to ditch him." It was a decision anticipated by Botham, who asked if he could publicly announce that he had resigned. "By all means," said Bedser, while adding that if he was asked a direct question during the ensuing media conference, he would give a true answer. Bedser recalls it being far more important that the selectors, to a man, kept Botham in the side, paving the way for the triumphs that followed.

The saga of Geoffrey Boycott's Test exile and triumphant return is dealt with, as is the breakdown of trust with Tony Greig that led to his sacking after he joined World Series Cricket. And Bedser's concern when he asked Colin Cowdrey to fly out to Australia, aged 42, to face Lillee and Thomson with England's shell-shocked troops. "He so wanted me to do well," said Cowdrey, "and he was terribly anxious that I didn't get hurt."

The twins' playing careers are covered in detail - the 236 wickets in just 51 Tests as Alec led the England attack, dismissing Bradman eight times. "He jarred my hand more than any other bowler I faced," says Trevor Bailey. Eric's all-round career, in which he had the misfortune to be a contemporary of the great Jim Laker and so was denied an England cap. But above all the book is a study of identical twins, the togetherness that the author describes as a "rare and precious relationship".