Paul Brooks

Paul Brooks played once as an 18-year-old for Middlesex in 1939 in the last match before war, drafted in to fill in for a number of regulars who had joined up. The game was Middlesex's last first-class fixture for almost seven years. Brooks made an unbeaten 44 in his only innings, an improvement on the duck he made in his one second-team outing a year earlier. But he had already made a minor name for himself when in 1938 he bowled Don Bradman in the nets at Lord's while he was on the MCC Groundstaff, a feat that earned him an interview on British Movietone News. In the war he was in the London Fire Service (he represented them at Lord's) and took part in the London and Coventry blitzes. He subsequently joined the Coldstream Guards and it was while serving with them in Italy in April 1945 he was shot by a sniper. He was repatriated but died from his wounds in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington in the January of 1946.
Martin Williamson