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Mervyn Derek BURDEN

In March 1962, Hampshire County Cricket Club held a great dinner in Southampton Guildhall to celebrate their first Championship trophy. Their President, former player and eminent historian HS Altham made one of the speeches during which he mentioned just five of the 16 men who appeared in that side. Three were the great heroes, opening batsman Roy Marshall, opening bowler Derek Shackleton and the flamboyant captain Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie. He also mentioned the “nearest approach to a patent grin I have seen on Henry Horton’s face”. Then he recalled the victory afternoon on the first day of the previous September calling it his “transcendent moment of the season”. He described:

“The scene in the somewhat confined area of the Bournemouth dressing room at the end of the Derby match with that most loyal of twelfth men Mervyn Burden achieving a hat trick of direct hits with champagne corks.”

The recording of that speech reveals a murmur of approval at the mention of Mervyn’s name – he was popular in the dressing room and among the Hampshire members and supporters who cheered them in three seasons to their best ever finish: third in 1955 when Mervyn’s first full season brought him 70 wickets at an average just over 21, runners-up in 1958 with 56 wickets at one run more and 1961 when he twice bowled Hampshire to important victories against Somerset including his career best 8-38 at Frome.

In that Championship winning season Mervyn Burden took 45 wickets, again averaging in the low twenties, yet it was his misfortune that by then county cricket was briefly experimenting with covered wickets (1959-1962) and throughout his career he was always behind Peter Sainsbury in the choice of slow bowlers – not least because Sainsbury batted and fielded better than Mervyn who was generally a certainty for the number eleven position. Further, by 1961, young Alan Wassell had arrived as a very promising slow-left-armer and, although Mervyn enjoyed a good start, his 45 wickets at 21.51 came in the first half of the season and he lost his place after just 12 matches.

He played more, taking 65 wickets, in 1962 but his average rose to 30 and, anticipating the return to uncovered wickets in 1963, he found himself, at just 32, on the outside. It was to be his last season although he took his leave of the county as cheerfully as he had joined it in 1947.

He was born in Southampton and discovered bowling for fun at the Swaythling indoor nets with his footballing team mates having never played an organised game of cricket. He signed a contract with a sense of astonishment, went to the nets, bowled one ball before a shot from Johnny Arnold cracked his ankle. The next day he came in to offer help to groundsman Ernie Knights and almost immediately kicked a bucket of whitewash over the square. They sent him home to rest his ankle and then he spent some years in the Club & Ground side and on National Service before his debut in 1953. He was part of that group of promising, and mainly local young men who became Hampshire’s first great team and, while he was not the luckiest of cricketers, he is one of the Club’s legends for his contributions in those three great sides and he is immortalised in one of the great Hampshire photographs (above left). With the pavilion clock showing just before 4.30pm on the afternoon of Friday 1 September 1961, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie and his team of Champions are assembled on the balcony for the captain to speak to the crowd. Before doing so he was captured on film leaning across to shake the hand of his twelfth man and Mervyn reciprocates with the broadest of grins.

As John Arlott once remarked Mervyn’s most unusual contribution to the team could not be measured in figures – his humour. Arlott added that he was “infallibly good natured, a cheerful loser, that rare creature - a genuine non-grumbler … one of the cricketing salt of the earth”. It was a sad loss when Mervyn Burden was the first of our Champions to die on 9 November 1987.