PETER HAYTER

As all bowlers have known since time immemorial, cricket is a batsman’s game. Why else would it be the case that, of the ten England players knighted for services to the sport (officially at least, Sir Ian Botham received his tap on the shoulders for services to charity) only one was a specialist bowler?
Long before Alec Bedser bent the knee in 1996, while he was still carrying the weight of the Test attack to Australia on his broad shoulders 40 years earlier, the great Surrey paceman and later chairman of selectors remarked pointedly that the last to be knighted was F...