WHEN I joined the staff of the Evening News as a boy, 48 years ago, the group advertising manager of Berrow's Newspapers was a charming chap named Harold Gibbons.

His popular nickname was Doc, and I didn't realise then that he had been one of the most exciting and prolific batsmen of English cricket between the two world wars.

It wasn't until enjoying subsequent seasons of cricket at New Road that I listened to my father and other Worcestershire supporters fondly remembering significant and sometimes swashbuckling innings by Doc Gibbons.

I believe the career of this cricketing hero of yesteryear is, therefore, well worth recalling again here today in Memory Lane!

Harold Gibbons joined Worcestershire from the Lord's ground staff in 1927, at the age of 22. In the next 13 seasons, until the outbreak of war in 1939, he played in 380 matches and went to the crease for 666 innings, being not out 57 times.

In all, he scored 20,918 runs, notched up 44 centuries and 109 half-centuries and had a batting average of 34.34. His highest score was 212 not out and he had the distinction of scoring his first double century - 200 not out - against the West Indian touring team in 1928.

Altogether, he figured in seven partnerships of 250 runs or more, two of them with the Nawab of Pataudi. He also held a total of 156 catches and, as a very occasional bowler, captured just seven wickets.

Doc clearly scored well over 1,000 runs a season and, in the summer of 1934, he was the first batsman in England to reach the 2,000-run mark - that was in early August. He finished the season with a tally of no fewer than 2,654 runs at an average of 52.03 per innings, making him easily England's top scoring batsman of 1934.

There was also another happy match for him that year - his marriage to Mary Farr, from a well-known Upton-upon-Severn family.

Doc apparently earned his nickname from the early days of his career, when he'd arrive at Lord's and New Road with his cricket gear in a black leather doctor's bag.

Clearly the outbreak of the Second World War brought a premature end to Doc's playing career and robbed him of perhaps five or six more high run-scoring seasons. He was given a benefit year in 1939, which brought him £911 - nearly double the highest figure enjoyed in previous years by other Worcestershire players.

Harold Gibbons was a member of the Special Constabulary during the war and tried a three-match return with Worcestershire at New Road in 1946, but soon decided to retire from the game to go into a new career in the publishing industry.

Doc became a trophy-winning county golfer, and his home for many years was in Hill View Road, Worcester. He died in 1973 after a long illness at the age of 68.

Long-time Evening News sports editor and cricket writer Jack Godfrey wrote of Doc at the time of his death: "He will be remembered as perhaps Worcestershire's most talented batsman not to find favour with the England Test selectors. He could always be counted on to give his best and brought a brand of batting to New Road that spectators, even now, never fail to enthuse over when cricket memories are being revived. Doc Gibbons rightly earned an honourable place in the sporting history of the county of his adoption."