Dennis Brookes was a fine batsman and a stalwart of Northamptonshire cricket – as a player from 1934 to 1959 (captain 1954–57), as coach and captain of the Second XI in the 1960s, and as president of the club from 1982 to 1984. Upright in stance, unruffled in demeanour, ‘Brookie’ adopted the same calm, dignified approach at the crease as he showed in life. When, after the War, he opened the batting for Northamptonshire, he managed, in the words of his Essex counterpart Dickie Dodds, ‘to make the fielding side feel that to bowl a bouncer to him was an affront against decency’.
Brookes scorned brute force, gathering runs almost imperceptibly with elegant drives and subtle deflections. As a young man, it was said, he had hooked and pulled, but in maturity such extravagances were excised. From his 925 first-class innings, Brookes amassed 30,874 runs – a number exceeded by only fifty-six players in the history of the game – at an average of 36.10. His seventy-one centuries included one against every county. His record was the more remarkable in that he was playing for a county who for the first nine years of his career (1934–39; 1946–48) finished bottom of the table seven times, and second bottom twice. Indeed from May 1935 to May 1939 Northamptonshire did not win a single match. Brookes well remembered the game against Leicestershire, at Whitsun 1939, when the long run of failure in the championship was broken. He had a boil on the neck, but, as he recalled, ‘in those days if you didn’t play you didn’t get paid’. His stoicism was rewarded when he made 187, and his side swept to their first victory against another county for four years. ‘Northants break a bad spell’, recorded the local Chronicle and Echo, with some understatement.
Yet despite Northamptonshire’s dreadful record, Brookes stood out as one of the best batsmen in the country. Chosen for M.C.C.’s tour of the West Indies in 1947–48, he scored a century in his second game, but was unlucky enough to chip a finger in the first Test. When the doctor caused an infection by strapping the injured finger to another, Brookes’s tour – and, as it transpired, his Test career – was over.
Despite Northamptonshire’s continuous run of defeats, Brookes remembered the carefree nature of pre-War cricket with great affection. At the Oval, for example, Surrey laid on as many drinks at lunch as the players wanted. ‘They used to have Pimms No. 1,’ he recalled, ‘and some of our senior players used to be a bit high by the time they went out in the afternoon. They stopped that later on.’
When the county championship resumed in 1946, Brookes scored 115 in his first innings, against Middlesex at Lord’s. Promoted to open the batting, he became the first batsman to score more than two thousand runs for Northamptonshire in a season. Many deemed him unlucky not to be chosen for M.C.C.’s tour of Australia in 1946–47. By the time Brookes retired from first-class cricket in 1959, he had scored 28,980 runs for Northamptonshire, more than anyone else in the county’s history. He exceeded one thousand runs in a season seventeen times, and two thousand runs six times. His best season was 1952, when he compiled 2,229 runs at an average of 47.42.
As captain of Northamptonshire’s second XI, Brookes was able to bring on such players as Peter Willey and Wayne Larkins. With his innate modesty, ‘Mr Brookes’ was greatly esteemed and much liked by all who encountered him. It seemed entirely appropriate that he should sit on the Bench in Northampton. His judgments on cricket reflected his experience in the game. ‘English cricket was at its best in the 1950s,’ he reckoned, looking back on nearly seventy years at Northampton. ‘Things that have destroyed the game are the covering of wickets, the introduction of one-day cricket (which spoilt the skills of it) and of course the grassroots (no cricket played in state schools). Cricket is a lifetime’s job. You can’t suddenly become a good cricketer at twenty-three or twenty-four.’ For years Dennis Brookes and his wife Freda lived in a house the back gate of which opened on to the members’ car park at the Northampton ground.
Dennis Brookes: b Leeds, Yorkshire, 29 October 1915; d 9 March 2006