Don Bennett (cricketer)

Donald Bennett (18 December 1933 – 12 June 2014) was an English cricketer and footballer, born in Wakefield, Yorkshire. As a right-arm fast-medium bowler and right-handed batsman, Bennett played for Middlesex County Cricket Club between 1950 and 1968, appearing in over four-hundred matches. He scored 10,656 runs and took 784 wickets in first class cricket. He went on to become a coach, and later director of cricket, for Middlesex, and retired after forty-seven years of service to the club. In football, he joined Arsenal FC in 1950 as an amateur, and then as a professional a year later. He played as a winger and then fullback for nine years in the second XI. In 1959 he moved to Coventry City Football Club where he earned 73 caps before retiring in 1962.Mike Brearley, who kept wicket for Bennett in the bowler's later years, recalled him to be a "stylish middle-order batsman and a lithe and athletic fielder."

Bennett was born in Wakefield in Yorkshire, and educated at Ashford County Grammar School. He failed a medical while joining the British Armed Forces and joined Arsenal in 1950. After nine years in the second team he moved to Coventry City FC and made 73 appearances before retiring in 1962.

As a cricketer, he made his first-class debut as a sixteen-year-old for Middlesex in 1950. He scored over 1,000 runs in a season in 1953 and 1955, and took 50 wickets in a season seven times. Bennett, who also played for the Marylebone Cricket Club, retired in 1968 and succeeded Jack Robertson as County Coach.

He remained coach for 29 years until his retirement in 1997, steering the county through its most successful period during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. Middlesex won the County Championship, the Benson & Hedges Cup, the Gillette Cup, the Refuge Assurance Cup and the Sunday League under his guidance. He was known for his strong fitness ethic, introducing pre-season training. His obituaries in the Daily Telegraph and The Cricketer cite the influence of his football career on his attitude to fitness.

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