John Edrich

Wisden overview
The youngest member of a prolific Norfolk cricket family, John Edrich was the sort of opening batsman every team-mate, and all selection panels, yearns for. A stocky left-hander of infinite discipline and courage, he knew his limitations and played to them unblinkingly, waiting for the right ball to put away. His main scoring areas were square on the off side, where he square-cut and punched either side of cover point with equal certainty, and through midwicket, where he was prolific. Years before batting helmets were even thought of, he was badly injured in 1965 when, following a sequence which brought him 1311 runs in nine innings, a triple-century against New Zealand, he ducked into a short ball from Peter Pollock, South Africa's fastest bowler of the 1960s. The ball seamed up the Lord's slope and hit Edrich on the forehead, knocking him cold. But as when Lillee broke two of his ribs at Sydney in 1974-75, it made no difference to Edrich's game at all: he just stayed in line and took whatever came his way. He was also a realist. On the rare occasions he was struggling for runs, he turned to Wisden to check how many runs he had made. "Twenty thousand, eh?" he would say to himself: "I can't be such a bad player after all!" John Thicknesse