Favourite cricketers 6 - Fred Swarbrook

Fred Swarbrook was for some time the youngest player to ever represent Derbyshire.

Like Ashley Harvey-Walker, he was not by any stretch of the imagination a world-beater, but a career record of 467 wickets at just under thirty counts for something. He was also a very dogged tailend batsman, and anyone who watched Derbyshire throughout the 1970's will remember many Bob Taylor/Freddie Swarbrook partnerships that saved or won matches. Freddie was an accumulator, pushing it around, and was a remarkably reassuring sight coming down the pavilion steps with the scoreboard showing 70-6 (which it did all too often, and sometimes much worse).

As a schoolboy, Fred offered me the encouragement that I could be a cricketer. He was not athletic, and while no Colin Milburn was not the most lithe player to wear Derbyshire colours. He was, however, a man who made the very most of his abilities. He would throw himself around (a pal once asked if the earth moved for me when Freddie had made a diving stop) and there was no one you'd want under a skier more than Fred, as long as his legs got him there.

His slow left arm today would see him ranked in the top three in the country, and for a couple of years he looked like he could make it to a higher standard. Who will forget his one man demolition of Sussex, when he took 9-20? In fact, given Derbyshire have not been blessed with too many slow-left arm bowlers, you'd be safe to say Fred was the best of his kind. Certainly a better bowler than Dallas Moir, who followed him, and far more dangerous when conditions were favourable than Ant Botha.

He was the first player I recall to suffer from the "yips" and Fred got that he couldn't pitch the ball at all. He was OK in the nets, but as soon as he got in the middle, it was gone. For a time he carried a lucky pebble, which he rubbed before bowling the ball. One of his teammates eventually suggested that he "bowl the bloody pebble and put the ball in your pocket".

Fred was let go by Derbyshire when his bowling was deemed past the point of no return. Admirable a tail ender as he was, there was not enough to his batting to be retained. Like Ashley Harvey Walker and Phil Russell, he built a new life in South Africa and did well as a groundsman and coach.

I've never met him, but in case he ever reads this, I should say that in schoolboy games of cricket, I always wanted to be Freddie Swarbrook. It says it all really.