A Guiding Light, He Will Be Sorely Missed By All

Derek Pringle looks back at the life and career of much-loved Essex and England legend, Doug Insole

Doug Insole was one of cricket’s most influential power-brokers. His passing, at the age of 91, will have been mourned from Chingford, where he lived, to Cootamundra, the birthplace of his good friend Donald Bradman, as well as all cricketing points between.

In a life that was as varied as it was long, Insole’s first job after school was to work as an Army translator during the last years of World War Two. When asked about it he always said, with typical self-deprecation, that he’d got an A-level in French and was told by the powers in charge: “that would do.” After the War and national service he went up to Cambridge to read History at St Catharine’s College, winning Blues at football and cricket.

As an amateur he captained the University and after them Essex, where his idiosyncratic but effective batting caught the eye enough for him to be picked for England. Greatness, as a player, was to elude him, and though he played nine Tests over seven years his bottom-hand dominant batting was exposed by Sonny Ramadhin, the West Indies’ canny wrist-spinner.

A man with a keen sense of duty, Insole retired from cricket in 1963 to become a cricket administrator, a role he performed in one shape or other – if you count the influence he still had as President of Essex CCC – for the remainder of his life.

Recently, The Cricketer magazine listed the 50 most influential people in cricket in 2017. Unsurprisingly, given he was 91, Insole was not on it. Yet, had they broadened their remit to include the last 50 years then he would certainly have been in the top five, such was his juxtaposition to some of cricket’s big upheavals like the Basil D’Oliveira affair; the dropping of Geoff Boycott and Ken Barrington for selfish batting; and the threat to the establishment of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket.