Peter Roebuck

Peter Michael Roebuck was an English cricketer who achieved later renown as an Australian newspaper columnist and radio commentator. A consistent county performer with over 25,000 runs, and one of the better English openers of the 1980s, Roebuck captained the English county side Somerset between 1986 and 1988. During 1989, Roebuck also captained an England XI oneday cricket team in two matches. His postplaying career as an erudite writer earned him great acclaim as a journalist with the Sunday Times and later as an author. Roebuck committed suicide in Cape Town, South Africa, onNovember 2011 after being asked by police to answer questions about an allegation of sexual assault. A book by Tim Lane and Elliot Cartledge titled Chasing Shadows The Life and Death of Peter Roebuck was published in October 2015.

Roebuck was born in the village of Oddington, outside Oxford, onMarch 1956, the son of two schoolteachers and one of six children he attended Millfield School where his mother was a mathematics teacher and his father an economics teacher. The headmaster, Jack Meyer, a former Somerset CCC Captain, had offered his parents employment at the school so that they could afford the fees. Meyer was an unconventional Headmaster who wanted to encourage cricket talent. On entering Meyers office for the interview for admission, Roebuck found an orange flying through the air towards him he caught it, and in his book, It Never Rains, speculated whether he would have got into Millfield if he had dropped it. He later studied law at Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge, graduating with first class honours in 1977. However he never practised law, finding it too confining.

Source: Wikipedia