Bill Edrich and his twin Denis Compton livened up postwar Britain. Crompton the Brylcreem ad, and Edrich the terrible twins scored  a staggering 7. 355 runs for Middlesex and England. Compton with his film star good looks ad flashing strokeplay, was easily characterised as a Cavalier while Edrich, a shorter but pungnacious  roundhead person, with five marriages, innumerable affairs throughout his career  and Distringuished Flying Cross (DFC) to show for his wartime RAF exploits, had the more colourful life. He joined the Lord’s ground staff as an 18 year-old in 1934, won a Middlesex contract three years  later, went on the Marylebone Cricket Club tour of India that winter and in 1938 scored 1, 000 first class runs before the end of May, a landmark achieved by only five men before him, two of whom are WG Grace and Donald Bradman.  His vital innings that helped England win the Ashes in 1953, his position in the team was rarely secure and he played a relatively modest 39 Test cricket in 17 years.
Drinking and sex were part of the problem. The moment he embarked for India in 1937, it was his first time abroad, and he was delighted to find the ship was full of debutantes. Thereafter he was constantly on the look out for his next conquest. Driving with teammates to a match in Hove. he waved to a girl  in the next lane of the A23, and they both got pulled over by police. Edrich got out of his car and into hers and wasn’t seen again until the next morning. On September, 3, 1939, he listened with teammates at Lords to Chamberlain’s announcement that Britain was at war with Germany. As he walked down to Baker Street afterwards an air raid siren went off and in the ensuing panic he found himself next to an attractive woman, both of them  clearly feeling a frisson of danger. Without money for a hotel room, there were, he recalled , “fireworks up against a tree in Regent’s Park”. No wonder one of his ex-wives said he was ” like a randy mole”.This was still the era of two tribes in cricket, Gentlemen and Players, and Edrich,  a professional belonged to the latter.   Every tour was an excuse to charm his way into the beds of a new set of women. Edrich grown up in Norfolk on grandly named farms leased by his father, the family were closer to Yeoman farmers than landed gentry and at school Edrich was occasionally called ” a right little tinker”.
As cricketers didn’t earn much in the 1930s, Edrich, like many fellow players supplemented his income with football. While Crompton played for Arsenal, Edrich played outside left for Spurs and then moved to Chelmsford City when they offered £8 a week. His attempt to make him a fortune like poultry rearing, installing concrete cricket pitches and a mobile sewage plant all came to nothing.
After training as a pilot in 1940 he flew Bristol Blenheims, light bombers that were increasingly vulnerable to German fighters and anti-aircraft artillery, always wearing his English cricket sweater under his flying jacket for luck.
There’s nothing admirable about borderline alcoholism, nor in abusing the trust of five wives but Edrich was clearly a much loved and much forgiven hero. His career began under George V and ended with Middlesex as Cliff Richard was making his debut in the charts.  Edrich’s life ended aged 70, with a St George’s Day lunch at Grosvenor House Hotel became an emotional affair  when Air Vice-Marshal Sir Ivor Broom, who had flown with him in Bomber Command, praised his courage in a speech.  The band of the Blues and Royals found themselves joined by Edrich, champagne glass in hand, marching across the ballroom floor. After he was taken home in a chauffer-driven Rolls-Royce, he had a few more drinks with his wife Mary and climbed the stairs to bed, but fell down and died.  Bill Edrich The Many Lives of England’s Cricket Great by Leo McKinstry, Bloomsbury Sport, £22, 250 pages.