Full Name

Derrick Harold Robins

Born

June 27, 1914, Bexleyheath, Kent

Died

May 03, 2004, Bishopscourt, Cape Town, South Africa, (aged 89y 311d)

Batting Style

Right hand Bat

Fielding Position

Wicketkeeper

Derrick Robins was a wicketkeeper who played just two first-class matches for Warwickshire in 1947, but then became a successful businessman and one of the game's most significant patrons. Starting with a cement-mixer in a field, he turned his firm Banbury Buildings into a major public company. In 1960, he became chairman of Coventry City FC and hired Jimmy Hill as manager, and their combined acumen and innovative drive made a failing club into one that stayed in the top division for 34 successive seasons and became a model for progressive thinking. Cricket was a harder game in which to find room for a man of Robins's determination, though he did take charge of the Eastbourne Festival, first organising the matches played by Colonel L. C. Stevens's XI, then taking over the fixtures in his own right. In 1969, D. H. Robins's XI played the opening match against the West Indian tourists with Robins as captain of a team containing eight Test players; he was then 54 and it had been 22 years since his last first-class match. He captained another star-studded team against the Indians in 1971, when he was already 57. (No one older has appeared in a first-class match in England since the war; his nearest rival Bob Wyatt was 56 when he turned out for Free Foresters in 1957.) But the following year he had six heart attacks in a week - he was not a man to do things by halves - which put paid to his cricket, his chairmanship of Coventry, and his business career. The South African administrator Jack Cheetham, however, asked him to start organising tours to South Africa. The four Robins teams, in successive seasons from 1972-73, were early busters of the anti-apartheid boycott and included many of the era's leading players. Robins insisted that the parties were multi-racial (John Shepherd of Kent was on the middle two trips) and shrugged off the political flak, organising trips elsewhere in the cricketing world as well. But the South African link was strongest, and he made his winter home there from 1975 onwards. Some players found the Robins style a little overbearing; most enjoyed the ride. He continued to organise golf tours long afterwards, involving many of the players from those 1970s trips. The Robins's XI maintained its own arcane rituals and jokey hierarchy, with such positions as Keeper of the Chair (Robins himself), Senior Keeper (Peter Parfitt), Keeper of the Peace and - most intriguingly - Keeper of the Liaison.
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack

Derrick Robins Career Stats

Batting & Fielding

FormatMatInnsNORunsHSAve100s50sCtSt
FC5737029*17.500040

Bowling

FormatMatBallsRunsWktsBBIBBMAveEconSR4w5w10w
FC5000-----000

Debut/Last Matches of Derrick Robins

FC Matches

Span
1947 - 1971

Recent Matches of Derrick Robins

MatchBatDateGroundFormat
Robins' XI vs Indians--30-Jun-1971EastbourneFC
Robins' XI vs West Indians13*30-Apr-1969EastbourneFC