Bert the sculptor of talent

Bert Robinson has coached more good public school cricketers than most other school cricket professionals have had hot dinners. The principal reason is that he is a most accomplished coach; another reason is that he has been doing the job a lot longer than anyone else.

Robinson has coached promising cricketers at Radley College since 1949. Born towards the end of the First World War, he celebrated his 90th birthday on 22 March; there is a cluster of cards by the fire in his house in the village of Radley, not far south of Oxford.

The school honoured him last night by unveiling a bronze bust made by a young sculptor called Charlie Langton, a former charge of Robinson's in the first team at Radley. "He's not a textbook coach," Langton recalls. "He gets to know you so well as a player, he knows exactly what to tell you."

Judge him by results: two of England's 15-man squad at the World Cup were coached by Robinson - Andrew Strauss and James Dalrymple. They had been at school with two county cricketers, Ben Hutton of Middlesex and Robin MartinJenkins of Sussex. The group signals a revival in public school cricket. Add Alastair Cook from Bedford School and the Old Etonian Alex Loudon and you have a significant core.

Albert George Robinson, known as Bert, was born in Leicester and brought up in Northampton. He was a fast-medium bowler ("I was fairly sharp," he says) who played intermittently for the county team between 1937 and 1946, with a six-year interruption in the RAF. His 35 first-class wickets came at an average of 41.82. After the war he played as a club professional, but by 1949 Robinson had decided it was time to settle down. He took the job at Radley, which paid [pound]5 a week, plus a house. He is still in the house.

He struck lucky. A 14-year-old already playing for the first team was called E R Dexter: "You could see there was something special, but you can improve them if you work on them. He loved the game. He's the best of the lot." Robinson declares that he has never had a cross word with a Radley boy but it is clear, even at this distance, that Ted Dexter was a bit of a handful.

He was a show-off: "One day I said, 'We could manage without you, Ted'." That quietened him down, and when Dexter's father heard about it, he approached Robinson to tell him he had done the right thing. Another 10 years, and Dexter was the captain of England.

These were the days when the cricketing elite among public schools played each other at Lord's, and Robinson's Radley made a good account of themselves, once going undefeated for six seasons.

Robinson was an active and kindly coach. He loved to see the boys ready for practice at 2pm on a summer afternoon: "As long as I was willing to work hard, they'd work hard too." He liked his players to spend as much time in the middle as in the nets (since he was the groundsman, there were no complaints).

Talent-spotting in the junior colts, and travelling with the team to away games, at which he would umpire, kept him busy. "I spent about half the season away from home. My wife? She could have left me a dozen times." She didn't, however, and they celebrated his 90th birthday together.

He retired officially in 1982. Dennis Silk, then the headmaster and no mean cricketer himself, told Robinson that he must no longer work on the grounds but that he could go on coaching for as long as he chose. "I mucked in after retirement," he says, and he had some fine material to work with. He recalls the boys who went on to play for England.

Strauss: "You could see there was something a little bit better about him, but he didn't stand out all that much. He was one of those boys who responded well." And Dalrymple: "He's something else, so talented in all facets of the game, and he listened to what you said. He's the best we've had since Ted."

Robinson still umpires the Old Boys match. He stands, still slim and upright, behind the stumps. He wears spectacles but swears his eyesight is still good enough. "It's a wonderful sport. It's been a wonderful life," says a man who has given the game no less than he has been able to take from it.

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