A birthday on February 29 has long ensured a routine chortle from Alf Gover when you call with all cricket's best wishes. "Not a leap year is it? Right, I'm still somewhere in my early 20s and don't you forget it." The oldest living Test cricketer is 93 and, as happy testament to his continuing spruce and lively good form, he gave his memento-merry party piece to enchant the faithful gathering at 'The Master's' London lunch just before Christmas, honouring his lustrous former Oval confrere Sir Jack Hobbs. Gover's fealty to Hobbs remains total. "He was the utter lord of his craft, and he had quiet humours too, but it was Jack's humility which made him so worshipped." John Arlott founded The Master's Club in 1953, with umpire Frank Lee and Guardian journalist Kenneth Adam (later director of BBC television). On being invited in 1954 to the second lunch – which is held every year on Hobbs' birthday, in the week before Christmas – Gover instituted there and then his party piece. As Arlott recalled in 1981: "Two rules – no speeches and only one toast, that of 'The Master'. Except, with the port, not a speech but Alf's story of the day he opened the batting with The Master at Northampton."

And so, almost a half-century on, did nonagenarian Alf again do the honours. "Surrey have to go in for a gloomy last half-hour of the day," he began. "Percy Fender ill, Jack skippering. Good Ernie Wilson, who was Andy S's [Sandham's] deputy, was down on the card to open, but kindly Jack didn't want Ernie under any pressure that night [which he repaid by scoring an immaculate 100 the next day] so told me to pad up.

"We walked out together. Me and The Greatest. Opening the innings. Proud? I was in heaven. Till Nobby Clark – tall, mighty quick, mighty good and a nasty leftie – came charging in and peppered me all over. I couldn't lay bat on ball for five deliveries, then I nicked a single. 'I'm sorry, Jack, I don't fancy this at all,' I said. He replied, 'All right, Alfred, I'll arrange matters.'

"And I never had to face another ball from Clark that night — nor for the 11/4 hours Jack and I batted on the next morning before Clark fumingly took his sweater. Cockily, I ambled down the pitch: 'Well, Jack, that's seen off the new ball then, as well as that blighter Clark, so what are my new orders, skip-partner?' Said Jack: 'Thanks Alfred, well done, but now I've just one last favour to ask, and I apologise for saying it.' 'What's that, Jack?' 'Get out immediately: some real batsmen are waiting to get in.' I got out next ball."

At least, Gover agrees, they could inscribe on his gravestone: HE OPENED WITH HOBBS. It is a privilege he shares with "my good and dear old Andrew Sandham" – with whom Gover opened a famous indoor cricket school in Wandsworth – and Herbert Sutcliffe. "Herbert had a remarkable temperament, an utter confidence in his ability," says Gover. "Once, against Yorkshire, my outswinger beat him all-ends-up coat-of-varnish-stuff five times in my first two overs. He didn't know what was happening. Then he comes up to me and says, 'Thank you, Alfred, for playing me in, I'll get a hundred now.' And the blighter did."

He chuckles on. Even allowing for his achievement, rare among fast bowlers, of taking 200 wickets in consecutive summers – 1936 and 1937 – every bead of sweat the galloping Epsom-born Gover put into his 77,269 first-class deliveries was worth it, you fancy, for the legend indelible in "the book" from the midsummer of 1934: The Oval, Surrey v the Australians, DG Bradman c Squires b Gover 77. It was that wicket which probably earned him the 12th man job (Nobby Clark narrowly won the vote) for the Oval Test. At close of play, one of Gover's jobs was to get the visitors to sign some benefit bats. So it was that he came to be in the Australian dressing room when Bradman was dismissed by Bill Bowes in the last over of the day, having put on 451 with Bill Ponsford. "Don was so obviously upset, I didn't dare ask him to sign. I said to Clarrie Grimmett, 'What's up with the bloke, he's just scored a spectacular 244 and The Oval's gone mad?' Clarrie said: 'He's seething with himself because he looked at the pitch before play and he knew he could easily make 400 himself if we won the toss.' "

Bradman is six months younger than Gover and the Kennington ancient is keen to share his pleasure at how their mutual friend Betty Surridge – widow of his late closest friend, Surrey's cavalier Stuart – visited Bradman in Adelaide this winter. "First thing he said to her was, 'How's old Alf keeping?' – and she said 'fine'. And The Don said, 'Well, tell him how us Aussies really used to reckon Alf. Not many pace bowlers in history could make the ball run away to the slips as late as he could, and he had a good break-backer, too.' That was nice of him, wasn't it?"

How many Englishmen are left who bowled at Bradman in a Test? Just Alex Coxon, Ken Cranston and Alec Bedser. Says Gover: "There was no use losing your concentration when bowling at Bradman, not like a few of our lot do now, throwing their arms about and stamping their feet and getting all huffy if they're clocked for four. Is his name Cadlock or something? Grumpy fellow. Middlesex had a bloke like him in my day [Gubby Allen? I nearly dared ask], and young Fred Trueman was another who made a heck of a fuss when somebody clocked him or dropped a catch off a long-hop. Hands on his hips, kick the crease, and glaring all around. Oh dear, oh dear. Frustrated, I once snatched my cap off umpire old Joe Hardstaff. No sooner done than I apologised. 'Just in time, lad,' he said severely. 'Just in time.' Afterwards, that grand captain Percy Fender called me in and, for this first offence, gave me a last warning: 'Do that once again, Alfred, you leave Surrey, and cricket, forever.' "

Gover's tally of 1,555 first-class wickets sits him snugly between Bill Voce and Tom Cartwright in the all-time legend. He now lives alone on a comfortable private retirement estate on Putney Hill. The old man chuckles softly. It is time for his kip. "Sorry," he says. "I answer the door and try to make myself cheerful for people ... but I'm lonely and alone really, and I still miss my darling little missus dreadfully. I get so tired and my memory has totally gone. But there you are, it's been a good life, a lovely one really."

Frank Keating is a sports writer for the Guardian. This piece first appeared in the March 2001 issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly.

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