"[1] This defensive style of play brought him the first of his nicknames, "Barnacle Bailey",[3] but he was a good enough cricketer to be judged retrospectively as the leading all-rounder in the world for most of his international career.

Bailey grew up in modest affluence: "The family lived in [a] semi-detached house at Leigh-on-Sea, complete with a live-in maid on 12 shillings (60p) a week; they did not, however, own a car.

[3] He won sporting scholarships to attend Alleyn Court Prep School, where he learned cricket from former Essex captain Denys Wilcox,[3] and then Dulwich College.

[3] He had played as a junior for Westcliff-on-Sea Cricket Club and made his debut for their first team in 1939, aged 15, scoring 135 and taking one wicket against Old Felstedians.

[6] Though World War II was still in progress, he received an early discharge in January 1945 to return to Alleyn Court Prep School as a schoolmaster.

[1] The Cambridge football team included Doug Insole, whom Bailey would later succeed as captain of Essex County Cricket Club.

[7] He quickly became a lynchpin of the Essex team, and made his Test debut for England against New Zealand at Headingley in June 1949, taking 6 wickets for 118 runs in his first match.

[8] A right-arm fast-medium bowler, dependable right-handed batsman and strong fielder, often in the slips or at leg gully, Bailey played 61 Tests for England between 1949 and 1959.

Bailey shared a defensive fifth wicket stand with Willie Watson, defying the bowlers for over four hours to earn a draw, taking 257 minutes to score 71 runs.

[10] In the fourth Test of that series, at Headingley, Bailey again played an important part in ensuring that England avoided going 1–0 down, which would have ended their hopes of regaining the Ashes.

He had a bad tour, during which he scored the slowest half-century in first-class cricket, reaching 50 just three minutes short of six hours at the crease,[3][15] in England's second innings during the 1st Test at Brisbane.

[19] His first-class cricket career began just after World War II in 1946 and lasted 21 years as he played 682 matches, taking 2,082 wickets at a bowling average of 23.13, which puts him 25th on the all-time list of wicket-takers.

[20] He supplemented his income by undertaking advertising work while playing for Essex, modelling for Brylcreem, Shredded Wheat and Lucozade.

[17][25] He was a regular on the BBC's Test Match Special from 1974 to 1999,[26] where fellow commentator Brian Johnston nicknamed him The Boil, based on the supposed Australian barrackers' pronunciation of his name as "Boiley".

(The Daily Telegraph gives an alternative source for this nickname from the pronunciation of his surname by the East End supporters of the Walthamstow Avenue football team.

[30] Doug Insole, his one-time captain at Essex, described him thus: "Trevor was quite a stroppy lad in his early cricketing years, and a bit of a rebel.

Rather, he fitted into a long tradition of hard-nosed English pragmatists – a lineage that runs from W. G. Grace, through Jardine and up to Nasser Hussain... To Bailey and company, the best way to honour the gods of cricket was to commit your heart and soul to the fight.

[10][24] The chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Giles Clarke, described him as "one of the finest all-rounders this country has ever produced", while Jonathan Agnew, who worked with Bailey on Test Match Special, wrote of him: "dogged batsman, aggressive bowler.

"[26] He wrote the following books: Alan Hill has written a biography: Note: Tate achieved an additional double in the 1926–27 Indian season