[2] He appeared, however, in only three Tests, none of them against Australia, and he left first-class cricket abruptly, suffering from mental health problems that would remain with him to the end of his life.

Harold Gimblett was born at Bicknoller in the Quantock Hills in west Somerset, where his family had been farmers since the 15th century.

[5] A year later, he was co-opted into the Somerset Stragglers team, a peripatetic amateur team which played matches across south west England, composed of former public school players of varying abilities, some of whom were the amateurs who formed a large contingent of Somerset county players up to the Second World War.

[6] Gimblett briefly moved to London to work, but city life was not to his taste and he returned home, resuming cricket for the Watchet club.

"[9] Daniell's son, quoted in the same book, said that the Somerset professional players had advised against taking Gimblett on to the county staff: "They used to tell my father they thought Harold was far too impulsive.

On the final Friday of Gimblett's trial, Somerset found themselves a player short for the match that started the following day against Essex at Frome when the amateur Laurie Hawkins reported in sick.

Wellard, unusually for him, was outpaced and was out, followed swiftly by Luckes, but Gimblett was joined by Bill Andrews, who also hit powerfully.

Gimblett retained his place for the next match, against Middlesex at Lord's, only because of another injury to a regular player, and though he top-scored with 53 in the second innings (still batting at No 8), he himself was injured and missed the next month.

[15] Wisden Cricketers' Almanack summed up his first first-class season in its 1936 edition, noting that he "failed to maintain his early form".

[18] That gave him fleetingly a season's batting average of more than 200, and he followed that up with a third century a week later against the admittedly weak Northamptonshire side.

[20] He was nonetheless selected for the England team for the first Test of the 1936 series in an experimental opening partnership with Arthur Mitchell of Yorkshire.

[21] England had been set 107 to win, but with a damp pitch and uncertain weather, "the task could not be regarded as an easy one," Wisden wrote.

[24] The carrot at the end of the 1936 season was selection for the MCC team to tour Australia and New Zealand in the 1936–37 season; the side was picked in early August, and Gimblett was not named in it, the young opening batsmen selected being Fagg and Charles Barnett, who replaced Gimblett for the third and final Test match against India.

Other batsmen of his own age, such as Leonard Hutton, moved ahead of him in the Test pecking order, and he was at times not fully fit.

[29] He completed 1000 runs easily in both seasons and there were occasional innings of brilliance: at Wells in 1937, he made 141 in 150 minutes with nine sixes and 16 fours against Hampshire.

[30] In 1938, Wisden noted that he was, at times, more defensive than he had been previously, and in run-getting he was overshadowed by his opening partner, Frank Lee, who scored more than 2,000 runs in the season.

[25] Gimblett volunteered for the Royal Air Force for the Second World War, but was allocated instead to the Fire Service, and saw duty in badly bombed cities such as Plymouth and Bristol.

Without taming his aggressive instincts, he had become more judicious in his shot selection, and though he remained until the end of his career likely to smash the first ball of a match for six, he also took on the role of senior batsman in a Somerset side that was usually weak in batting.

Gimblett told his biographer David Foot, on the tapes that form the backbone of the biography, that he had said on the pitch at Eastbourne to Sussex player James Langridge: "Well, that's got rid of one amateur's name in our county's record books.

The England Test side was being outplayed by the West Indies, and specifically by two previously unknown spin bowlers, Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine.

After a bad defeat in the second Test at Lord's, the England selectors sent for Gimblett for the third match at Trent Bridge with the apparent aim of having him hit the two spinners out of their rhythm.

At the end of the 1950 English season, however, he ventured abroad for the first time, taking part in a Commonwealth tour of India and Sri Lanka and opening the batting in all five of the representative games.

But Gimblett's own performance drew one of the game's accolades: in the 1953 edition of Wisden, he was named one of the Five Cricketers of the Year, alongside Tom Graveney, David Sheppard, Stuart Surridge and Fred Trueman.

[49] The 1953 season, with 19 Championship defeats, was even worse than 1952: Gimblett's own performance was maintained, though three matches missed through injury meant his aggregate fell a little, but he "seldom received adequate support from his colleagues", wrote Wisden.

[51] At the end of the 1953 season he played festival cricket at Hastings and Kingston and Wisden's notes on Somerset in 1954 announced that he had "accepted a five-year contract to remain with the club".

Alan Gibson, the cricket writer who himself suffered from bouts of mental illness, wrote of him: "Most of those who watched him, or even met him, took him for a cheerful extrovert.

[53] In the biography, Foot writes of discovering the depth and the variety of Gimblett's different hatreds: "The hate – his uncompromising word – was spread over a wide area.

"[55] In the winter of 1953–54, Gimblett spent 16 weeks in Tone Vale Hospital, a psychiatric institution, where he was given electro-convulsive therapy, and was released in time to join the Somerset team for the start of the 1954 season.

[56] He played in the first two county matches of the new season, but was not fit enough mentally to continue and – though the details vary – Somerset agreed to give him time off.

[59] In the end, his mental and physical health problems – he suffered from arthritis – meant he fell out with Millfield in the same way that he had with county cricket, and he retired to live at Minehead; he was involved in a minor way with coaching and fund-raising for Somerset, but his behaviour was sometimes unpredictable and he found it hard to reconcile his former fame with his reduced circumstances.