Ted Dexter: Former England and Sussex captain dies aged 86 - obituary

An innovative cricketer, Ted Dexter also excelled as a golfer, and devised what eventually became cricket's world rankings

Ted Dexter, who has died aged 86, was a commanding, attacking batsman and medium-pace seamer who captained Sussex and England - though success eluded him in a later spell as chairman of selectors.

Nicknamed 'Lord Ted' since his schooldays at Radley in Oxfordshire, Dexter was also an outstanding golfer who could have played the sport professionally, and pursued a wide range of interests outside of cricket.

He was the only England Test captain born in Milan, the only player to declare himself unavailable for a winter tour in order to stand for Parliament, and the first selector to reference astrology in a news conference.

But it was as a player that he excelled, with six of his nine Test hundreds bigger than 140, and in a statement announcing his death, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) called him "one of England's greatest ever cricketers".

From Milan to Sussex, via Malaya and Cambridge

Edward Ralph Dexter, son of an Army major who won a Military Cross at the Somme in World War One, was born on 15 May 1935, the family having moved to Italy on business.

After Radley and a National Service stint in Malaya, he made his debut for Cambridge University in April 1956, the first of three successive summers of first-class cricket for the team.

A debut for Sussex followed after the end of the summer term in 1957 - and a month after his final game for Cambridge before graduating in 1958, he was picked for the Test team to face New Zealand at Old Trafford.

Chosen for his all-round skills, batting at six and bowling first change behind Fred Trueman and Brian Statham, Dexter hit 52 in his only innings but was dropped for the next Test and only made the winter tour to Australia as an injury replacement.

England captain, political candidate

After battling against rival captain Richie Benaud in the 1962-63 Ashes, Dexter later piloted a light aircraft to Australia to cover the 1970-71 series as a journalist

Having married model Susan Longfield in May 1959, he established himself in the Test side the following winter with some big scores against a West Indies pace attack led by Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith.

Returning from the Caribbean, he was made captain of Sussex for 1960 and first led England in Pakistan and India in 1961-62 when several senior players declined to tour the subcontinent.

Preferred to Colin Cowdrey as tour captain a year later, Dexter had an astonishing series with the bat, scoring 481 runs - still the highest tally by an England skipper in Australia but a 1-1 series draw meant Richie Benaud's Australians retained the Ashes.

Despite a 3-0 win in New Zealand, home series defeats by West Indies and Australia meant the captaincy passed to MJK Smith.

Dexter had an unusual reason for not being available for the 1964-65 tour of South Africa - as he was the Conservative Party's candidate for Cardiff South East at the General Election of October 1964.

But despite polling 22,288 votes, Dexter failed to unseat shadow chancellor and future Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan, leaving him free to join the tour as Smith's vice-captain.

'Lord Ted' did not look out of place sat alongside the Queen in the Lord's pavilion during an Ashes Test in 2001

One-day innovator

Limited-overs cricket first came to England in 1963 with the Gillette Cup - a 65-over competition in its first year, before being reduced to 60.

Dexter led Sussex to victory in the first two seasons with some innovative captaincy - notably bowling straight, to defensive fields, to keep the run rate down, and even placing nine men on the boundary (years before field restrictions were introduced) towards the end of the innings.

In 1965 his career looked to be over when his car ran out of petrol and he broke a leg pushing it to a garage. But he not only returned to play for Sussex occasionally in 1966 and 1967, he even made an unlikely England comeback for two Tests in 1968.

Having continued to play for the International Cavaliers side since the mid-60s, after two years away from county cricket he played for Sussex in the new Sunday League in 1971 and 1972.

The chairman who devised the world rankings

Dexter's eclectic range of post-playing interests, both in business and journalism, included writing a crime novel, and launching a scheme to find new fast bowlers by leaving recruitment forms in pubs.

More successful was an attempt to devise a ranking system for Test players, launched in conjunction with accountancy firm Deloitte in 1987 - it was later adopted by the International Cricket Council and exists today as the official ICC rankings.

Two years later, Dexter succeeded his old England team-mate Peter May as chairman of selectors, becoming the first man to be paid for the role, but he inherited a declining England side overpowered 4-0 by Australia, while a "rebel" tour to apartheid South Africa also depleted selection options.

Gimmicks included Dexter writing an uplifting song called "Onward Gower's Cricketers" (to the tune of the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers"). But the omissions of David Gower and Jack Russell from the 1992-93 tour of India were hugely controversial selections.

By 1993, with another heavy Ashes defeat in prospect, Dexter commented after the Lord's Test that "Venus may be in the wrong juxtaposition with somewhere else", and the announcement of his resignation during the fifth Test at Edgbaston was greeted with a round of applause from the crowd.

He later served the MCC as president and cricket committee chairman, and became a CBE in 2001. After a spell living in France, he moved to Wolverhampton to be nearer his family - and continued to pursue new interests, joining a mentor scheme at the age of 83 to help local schoolchildren improve their reading.

Golf remained a lifelong passion for Dexter, seen here with Peter Alliss - no lesser figures than Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player tried to persuade him to take up the game professionally