Few will be missed more than Sir Alex Bedser

In that one sentence you get some idea of what Bedser meant to English cricket in the years after the Second World War when sport took a hand in relieving the austerity of the nation.

Bradman was even heard to say of Bedser: "He probably worried me more than any other Englishman."

Think of the feelgood factor Andrew Flintoff engendered in the team of 2005 which regained the Ashes and you have some idea of Bedser's place in the psyche of English cricket at a time which was not short of budding legends such as Len Hutton and Denis Compton.

Bedser took 236 Test wickets in 51 Tests with his fast medium swing bowling off a short run-up.

He took five wickets in a Test innings 15 times and 10 wickets in a match five times. Compare that with Flintoff's 226 wickets in 79 Tests, during which he never took 10 wickets in a match and managed five in an innings on only three occasions.

Bedser was the match-winner supreme, England's bowling spearhead for a decade and the man who helped Surrey to eight County Championships in the Fifties.

His extraordinary consistency saw him take 100 wickets in a county season 11 times and 1,924 first-class wickets in 485 matches during a 21-year career.

But statistics do not tell the whole story about a man who was admired as much in Australia as he was at home.

Bedser was a loyal, uncomplaining servant, whose crusty exterior belied a gentle nature. Until, that is, he had leather in his hands.

After a war in which he saw service with the RAF at Dunkirk, his Ashes legend included taking 30 wickets at a cost of only 16 runs each Down Under on the tour of 1950-51 which ended in England's first post-war win against Australia.

He was the key bowler at 35 when England regained the Ashes for the first time in 20 years in 1953. In that series, he took 39 wickets at 17 runs each.

His Test career was cut short by an attack of shingles in Australia before the Ashes were retained in 1954-55, but he went on to manage England tours and was a selector for 23 years, including as chairman from 1969 until 1981, during which time Basil D'Oliveira was left out of the England team for the tour of South Africa and Ian Botham was sacked as captain.

Bedser never married but was inseparable from his twin brother Eric, a right-handed batsman for Surrey, who died in 2006. Alec served on the MCC committee and was knighted in 1997 and in 2004 was selected in 'England's Greatest Post-War XI' by The Wisden Cricketer magazine.

Former Prime Minister Sir John Major, a keen Surrey and England fan, said: "Alec Bedser was one of the greatest medium fast bowlers of all time.

"He was also one of the great thinkers about cricket and his wisdom was one of the great untapped resources of the modern game. Alec was my bowling idol. Few people have served cricket better. None will be more missed."

ECB chairman Giles Clarke said: "Alec Bedser deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest England bowlers of all time, a master of the craft of seam bowling and a true legend of the game."