Cricket: New faces for 1999: School helps Martin-Jenkins to grow up

THE NAME is big enough in every sense of the word to be a burden. The late Jim Laker gently poked fun at it when he said: "There are a lot of people in the field of cricket broadcasting these days, there's Christopher Martin-Jenkins to name three of them."

But the 23-year-old Robin Martin-Jenkins is not bothered. "I would never dream of dropping the Martin hyphen bit," he said. "If anything it has helped me rather than hindered my progress over the years. As I was going through the ranks of schoolboy cricket and then later in trials with Sussex I would get looked at more than the other boys, because people were interested in the name. But I have still had to come up with the goods. It is not the name that has got me where I am."

At least Robin's cricket career is not going to be one long comparison with that of his father. Christopher is once removed from the professional world his son, a right-hand bat and right arm fast-medium bowler, has just entered with Sussex. "My father is not a bad batsman," said Robin, who like his old man, the Daily Telegraph cricket correspondent and BBC Test Match Special commentator, plays for his club, Horsham, whenever he gets the chance.

"But, because he is a journalist and a broadcaster, while I am a professional cricketer, I have nothing to live up to in terms of playing the game and matching or bettering his achievements. He is not an Ian Botham. I feel very sorry for Liam Botham and other sons of famous sports people from that point of view."

As sound as those sentiments are, Martin-Jenkins is already having to live up to his own achievements for Sussex, where he is beginning to show all the signs of turning into a genuine all-rounder.

He was fourth highest in his county's first-class batting averages at a shade under 30, and he proved with a couple of Championship half-centuries that he can hit the ball. He is correct, but not afraid to go for his shots.

His fast medium bowling - and the occasionally wickedly quicker ball - brought him 22 wickets at 19.86, in the handful of Championship matches his final-year studies at Durham University allowed him. With his height he can generate useful bounce, and although he strives for consistency of rhythm there is a quicker delivery that can catch out the best of batsmen.

Indeed, his bowling looks to be the real thing. A career-best 7 for 54 against Glamorgan was a match-winning performance late last summer and there is excited talk, in the shires and in the game in general, of him having the potential to go all the way to the top.

Martin-Jenkins is having none of it. Not surprising, really. He graduated with a degree in sociology and has a sharp enough grasp of the realities of his chosen profession. And anyway, he has not even been capped by Sussex yet, so talk of him succeeding for England has to be a touch premature to say the least.

With his feet planted firmly on the ground, some six and a half feet below his head, Martin-Jenkins makes it clear he is under no illusions. "I need to do a full year in county cricket which, provided I am picked, should be this coming season," he said.

"Traditionally coaches and the press get very excited when a youngster does well in their first half year, talking about their potential as an England player only to find a couple of years later that they have not progressed. I just would not know. I need to bowl and bat against the best, then I will find out. Right now I am quite happy to be underrated rather than overrated." When pushed, though, Martin-Jenkins admitted: "Quietly I would back myself to succeed."

No one, it would seem had really pushed him much as a youngster. For all his father's ability at club level, the pushing was to come a lot later in Martin-Jenkins' formative years.

He said: "My father has been a very big influence, encouraging me from the moment I first picked up a bat. He went out of his way to make sure I had the best coaching around and the best opportunities. Like a lot of parents he has driven me all over the country as a youngster, taking me to matches and festivals. Yet he has never made me play cricket. He never pushed me to go on. It is something that happened naturally.

"Although we have never actually discussed it, I think he was desperate for me to make it in the game. One gets that impression. He is delighted when I do well and he asks me all sorts of questions about life as a professional cricketer."

The push came to shove while Martin-Jenkins was in his second year at Durham. He became a part of the Durham Academy, coming under the harder- nosed, highly intelligent influence of former Lancashire and England opener Graeme `Foxy' Fowler.

"I only really benefited in my second year at the academy, which was last year," said Martin-Jenkins. "But even in that short time there I felt much better prepared for the season with Sussex. And I did not feel I was losing out in the professional game by being at university. In future people at Durham University will find, thanks to the academy, that their cricket will not suffer. They will come out at the end with a degree and their playing career should have progressed.

"From a personal point of view Foxy has definitely helped me grow up in the game," acknowledged Martin-Jenkins. "The academy, though, helps everyone to get into a professional frame of mind. Foxy is good at the mental side of the game, while obviously the technical side of coaching there is also very good."

David Gilbert, now general manager at Hove, saw a huge difference in Martin-Jenkins. "He was harder," remembered Gilbert, the former Australian Test fast bowler. "They brought out his competitive side. There was suddenly an edge to his game."

He managed one Championship match during his Easter vacation when he scored a second-innings 63 and had three victims in a two-wicket win over Lancashire. He also has a modicum of success in the Sunday League match against the same opponents, although Sussex lost that game, which was played under floodlights.

Martin-Jenkins is still young enough and new enough in the game to marvel at how his life is panning out. "I took a year off school [Radley] and university and I got caught up in the excitement of it all. Just to be a professional cricketer was amazing," he said. And it would appear that the enthusiasm and wonder of it has still not worn off.

But reality is there all the same. "I think I have grown up a bit and realised that cricket is going to be my life," he explained. "So I jolly well have to buckle down or end up on the dole or in an office job which I definitely don't want."

However far he goes, Martin-Jenkins has the wherewithal and the attitude. Already he is beginning to make a name for himself. It is surely just a matter of time before a little bit of history is created - father doing commentary on his son.