Ian Peebles

Who was Ian Peebles?

Ian Alexander Ross Peebles was a cricketer who played for Oxford University, Middlesex, Scotland and England. After retiring from cricket he became a cricket writer, working as a journalist on The Sunday Times and as the author of many books on cricket.

Peebles had one of the strangest introductions to first-class cricket of any player. He was born in Aberdeen and came south to London as a teenager to take up a post as secretary to the cricket school run by the former South African Test player Aubrey Faulkner. He so impressed Faulkner and other observers, including Sir Pelham Warner, with his leg break and googly bowling that, when the amateurs were short of a team to play in the annual Gentlemen v Players match at The Oval, Peebles was invited to make up the numbers. He took just one wicket in that game and scored only a few runs, and was not notably more successful in end-of-season festival matches at Scarborough and Folkestone. But he was then picked, ostensibly as "secretary to the captain" for the 1927–1928 MCC tour to South Africa, where he played in the first four Tests.

In 1928, Peebles played his first county matches for Middlesex and the following year, as a regular in the team, he took 120 wickets at less than 20 runs per wicket. He was at Oxford for only one season, 1930, but took 70 wickets for the university, including 13 in the Varsity match against Cambridge.