Ellis Robinson

Ellis Pembroke Robinson (10 August 1911 – 10 November 1998) was a first-class cricketer who took over 1,000 first-class wickets for Yorkshire from 1934 to 1949, and Somerset from 1950 to 1952.

Robinson was born in Denaby Main, Conisbrough, near Doncaster, Yorkshire. His Christian names, Ellis Pembroke, derived from his mother, a cockney housemaid who worked for a Cambridgeshire family called Ellis Merry who was a college servant at Pembroke College. "My mum had played cricket on Parker's Piece, where Jack Hobbs had played, and I can't remember when I didn't play the game," he told Nigel Pullan in an interview in 1996.

Robinson learned his cricket at his Denaby club and was sent to Bramall Lane, Sheffield, for George Hirst to assess. He began as a promising wicketkeeper batsman but – "There was no room to keep wicket so, anxious to impress Mr Hirst, I bowled a few quick leg-breaks and googlies." He was invited to the famous "winter shed" at Headingley and told, in true Yorkshire fashion, to forget the leg breaks and concentrate on off spin. Yorkshire had Hedley Verity to spin the ball away from the bat and needed an off spinner as variation as the great George Macaulay was coming to the end of his career.

Robinson made his Yorkshire debut at Worcester in 1934 against Worcestershire, taking 4–31 and watching the 18-year-old Len Hutton score 196, his first century. He did not establish himself in the strong Yorkshire team until 1937 when he took 78 wickets at an average of 22.55. He snared 104 wickets in 1940 and 120 in the last season before the war and spent six years during in the R.A.F. during the war.