Rory Burns is one of a select group who have captained Surrey to the County Championship. Richard Spiller profiles Surrey’s every title-winning skipper.
John Shuter: 1890, 1891, 1892
Surrey had been deemed “champion county” on several occasions – it was awarded by consensus among the sporting press – before the competition was formalised in 1890, notably as the inaugural winners in 1864 and then in the last three years of the 1880s, twice outright and then sharing it with Nottinghamshire and Lancashire.
When the County Championship officially began, Surrey had a magnificent team which purred along under the stewardship of John Shuter, who knew how to use an attack which included George Lohmann, John Sharpe and William Lockwood.
Born in Thornton Heath in 1855, Shuter was educated at Winchester College. Kent had rejected his services and he swiftly moved to Surrey. A fine batter in his own right, Shuter played a single Test for England in 1888 but his best form was behind him by 1890. That did not stop him from leading the county to a hat-trick of titles, stepping down when the side slipped to fifth in 1893.
Shuter had a spell as an England selector and briefly became Surrey secretary in 1919 but died a year later.
Kingsmill Key: 1894, 1895, 1899
Sir Kingsmill Key BT, a fourth baronet, was highly qualified off the field for being captain of one of the country’s leading teams, attending Clifton College and then Oriel College in Oxford. Happily, he was also a force on it, having achieved his Blue as a freshman and scoring 186 in a university match in 1886. He achieved similar recognition playing rugby. Wisden described Key as a “fine, free powerful” batter who could adapt to all circumstances while being an “imperturbable” captain.
Key had the opportunity to display those talents when he succeeded Shuter in 1894, claiming back-to-back titles in his first two seasons plus another in 1899. Lohmann’s health had given way but Tom Richardson spearheaded a superb attack while Bobby Abel led the batting. Key stepped down after that third triumph. By then he was 35 and had grown somewhat rotund but had plenty on his plate as a member of the London Stock Exchange. He died aged 67 from blood poisoning after an insect bite.
Cyril Wilkinson: 1914
Surrey captains early in the 20th century found their job made harder by the demands of club president Lord Alverstone, who insisted that amateurs should be given preference in selection, even if they were inferior to professionals in standard. It was one of the reasons the county did not win the Championship again until 1914.
Five occupants of the office found the title beyond them before Cyril Theodore Anstruther Wilkinson took charge in 1914. A sporting all-rounder who would win a gold medal for hockey at the 1920 Olympics – he captained that side too – Wilkinson’s talents included an enterprising batting style.
Surrey won 15 of their 26 matches in 1914, Jack Hobbs making 2,499 runs, but the season was played against the background of the slide towards the First World War. It broke out in August, necessitating one home match to be moved to Lord’s and the final two being cancelled. It was not until the autumn that MCC confirmed Surrey were champions.
Wilkinson returned to captain Surrey in 1919 and 1920, although business commitments made his availability increasingly rare. He continued to play sporadically, scoring 50 and taking all 10 wickets in a match for Sidmouth in 1953, aged 69.
Educated at Blundell’s School and becoming registrar of the Probate and Divorce Registry, Wilkinson was appointed CBE in 1954 and died in 1970.
Michael Barton: 1950
Surrey had been a dropped catch away from the title in 1948, having found the title beyond them in the inter-war years on the batting-friendly pitches at The Oval.
Finding a captain – an amateur was required – proved especially testing in the post-WW2 years, Errol Holmes returning for a second stint in 1947-48, his first having been in 1934-38.
Michael Barton, an Oriel man who had made the Oxford University side pre-war and appeared for Norfolk either side of the conflict, joined Surrey in 1948 and took over from Holmes for the next three seasons. Leading a team developing towards its 1950s greatness, his second season saw the county share the Championship with Lancashire and he passed on a rich inheritance. Barton played intermittently – he passed in a season 1,000 three times – and was club president in 1983. He died, aged 91, in 2006.
Stuart Surridge: 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956
There was no doubt who was in charge when Stuart Surridge took over. Telling Surrey’s committee that he believed the club would win the County Championship for the next five years, they did just that. There was no doubt about the talent at Surridge’s disposal – an attack featuring Alec Bedser, Jim Laker and Tony Lock was the envy of any captain – but his barnstorming style made them irresistible. If his methods riled the opposition, then he appeared to lose little sleep over it.
Winning 86 out of 140 matches during his term, Surridge knew how expensive missed chances had been in previous seasons and was among the ring who would snap them up as yet another team were rushed out, claiming 375 catches in his career.
Born in 1917 at Herne Hill and educated at Emanuel School, Surridge did not play a first-class match until he was 30 but knew the players who he exhorted to victory, having played alongside so many of them in the early stages of his time with Surrey. His 506 first-class wickets also underline the useful role his seam bowling could play when required.
Standing down after five glorious years, Surridge was not done with Surrey, serving on the committee for many years including being chairman of cricket, which he mixed with his high-profile role in the family’s cricket and sport equipment business. Surridge was county president in 1981 and he died in 1992, aged 74.
Peter May: 1957, 1958
Peter May had been England captain for two years by the time he succeeded Stuart Surridge, his dominant batting crucial to the success of both county and country.
The prodigy who shone at Charterhouse School and Cambridge University maintained his prolific output at top level, a classical style seeing him regarded as the finest player to emerge since the Second World War.
May might have lacked Surridge’s buccaneering approach but Surrey were at their peak in 1957, winning the Championship by an enormous 94 points, also captaining England to a heavy victory over West Indies. And it became seven Championships in a row in 1958, May spearheading a trouncing of New Zealand before heading down under at the head of a tour party regarded as one of the strongest ever.
But they were crushed 4-0 by Richie Benaud’s Australians and May’s health began to let him down after that, available only intermittently before retiring from Test cricket in 1961 and stepping down as Surrey captain a year later. A career which had brought 27,592 first-class runs at 51 – and 4,537 at 46 in 66, his 41 Tests as captain a record for many years – was over. May concentrated on his career as a stockbroker and bringing up four daughters. Not that he left cricket completely, serving six years as chair of England’s selectors in the tricky 1980s plus being president of Surrey (twice) and MCC. He was awarded the CBE in 1981. May died of a brain tumour, borne with typically quiet courage, four days before his 65th birthday in December 1994.
Micky Stewart: 1971
One of the youngest members of the 1950s team, it fell to Micky Stewart to rebuild Surrey after the great team which achieved such unparalleled – and, so far, unequalled – glory.
A fine sporting all-rounder, who played amateur football for England, Stewart would have been Surrey’s first professional captain when he took charge in 1963 only for the distinction between “gentlemen” and “players” having been abolished during the previous winter.
But he was professional in everything he did, one of the first players to believe that improved levels of fitness were a crucial aspect in preparation. Stewart’s task in rebuilding Surrey took much work, made all the harder by playing on increasingly moribund pitches at The Oval. It was not until 1971 – which he had decided would be his final summer in the first-class game, although was eventually postponed for 12 months – that Surrey finished top of the pile again.
Even that looked unlikely in mid-August only for a run of five successive victories to fuel a charge up the table. Glamorgan’s last pair held on to deprive Surrey of winning the title at The Oval, bonus points in the final match – against Hampshire at Southampton – ensuring the title was to be achieved by winning more matches than Warwickshire, who were level on points.
Born in Herne Hill in 1932, Stewart’s prolific county form and superb close catching finally forced the England selectors to pick him when he was almost 30, his career of eight Tests ending when he suffered dysentery while vice-captain of the tour to India in 1963-64. A burgeoning post-retirement career with Slazenger was cut short when he was lured back to The Oval as Surrey’s first cricket manager, immediately initiating a revival. That was followed by becoming England’s first boss, from 1986-92, before moving on to becoming ECB director of coaching until 1997.
Awarded the OBE for services to cricket in 1998, his involvement in the game has never ceased, becoming Surrey president in 1998-99 with the pavilion at The Kia Oval now named after him.
The Stewart dynasty has been developed on and off the field by Alec, first as an illustrious international player and then Surrey’s director of cricket, while eldest son Neil and daughter Judy play important roles in youth cricket.
Adam Hollioake: 1999, 2000, 2002
Adam Hollioake always stood out as the leader of a group of talented youngsters who would form Surrey’s golden generation at the turn of the 21st century, an Australian edge to his game unsoftened by an upbringing which included spells living in Hong Kong and England.
Surrey’s dearth of honours in the final stages of the 20th century were such that since winning the Championship in 1971, their only success had been the NatWest Trophy in 1982. That drought ended with the Axa Equity & Law Sunday League in 1996, when Hollioake took a record 39 wickets and frequently deputised for Alec Stewart. Taking over as captain the following season, he was soon lifting the Benson & Hedges Cup but a year later Surrey’s pursuit of the Championship blew up horribly in the final stages. Hollioake was determined there would be no repeat of that and the combative all-rounder – whose England career of four Tests and 35 ODIs had run into the ground in that year’s World Cup – enterprisingly led a side which cruised to the title with two matches in hand. Hollioake had a magnificent team under him, packed with internationals and an attack headed by the swing and seam of Martin Bicknell, as well as having a spin maestro in Saqlain Mushtaq.
They retained the title in 2000, adding the Benson & Hedges Cup in 2001, but before the following season could start Adam’s younger brother Ben, an all-rounder of natural talent, was killed in a car crash near the family home in Perth. Adam returned late and led Surrey to their third Championship in four years, a batting line-up including luminaries such as Mark Butcher, Ian Ward, Alec Stewart, Graham Thorpe and Alistair Brown now augmented by the prolific Mark Ramprakash. A fourth title in five summers looked likely in 2003 until the campaign – which had saw both the inaugural T20 Cup and National League won – went badly askew. The Hollioake era was over. He retired the following season, since then flirting with spells in Mixed Martial Arts, media work and coaching.
Rory Burns: 2018, 2022, 2023
Rory Burns announced his arrival as the Surrey skipper with intent, leading his side to the Championship summit and bringing the first red-ball title to Kennington after 2002.
By the start of 2018, Burns was long established at the top of Surrey’s order and proved to be one of the key factors in his team’s triumph, having succeeded Gareth Batty during the winter. All the hard work – he attended Whitgift and City of London schools and then Cardiff University – came to fruition and he made his Test debut later that year. It was the first of 32 caps over three years, which have so far netted 1,789 runs at 30.
Burns led his side to a second triumph in 2022, manipulating a five-pronged seam attack and remaining a steady presence both on the field and with the bat. Earlier this month, he added a third feather in his cap, meaning only Surridge stands ahead of him in County Championship titles.
