Mike Brearley
cricket player of England (born 1942)
John Michael Brearley (born 28 April 1942) is a retired English first-class cricketer who captained Cambridge University, Middlesex, and England to three successive Ashes series wins. He was the captain of the English squad which finished as runners-up at the 1979 Cricket World Cup.
Brearley captained the international side in 31 of his 39 Test matches, winning 18 and losing only 4. He was the President of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in 2007–08. Since his retirement from professional cricket he has pursued a career as a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist (registered with the BPC), motivational speaker, and writer, serving as President of the British Psychoanalytical Society 2008–10. In 2015, an article in the Bleacher Report ranked Brearley as England's greatest-ever cricket captain.
Early life
Brearley was born in Harrow, Middlesex, England, and was educated at the City of London School (where his father Horace, himself a first-class cricketer, was a master). While at St John's College, Cambridge, Brearley excelled at cricket (he was then a wicketkeeper/batsman). After making 76 on his first-class debut as a wicketkeeper, he played for Cambridge University between 1961 and 1968 (captaining the side in 1964), first as an undergraduate in the Classical and Moral Sciences tripos, and then as a postgraduate.
While still at Cambridge, he was chosen for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) tour to South Africa in 1964–65, and to captain the MCC Under-25 side in Pakistan in 1966–67, where he scored 312 not out against North Zone (his highest first-class score) and 223 against the Pakistan Under-25 side.
The public source identifies “Mike Brearley” as cricket player of England (born 1942). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mike, Brearley and cricket.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3071417. VIAF identifies the subject as 6194831. The Library of Congress control number is n78063490. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 1979, 2007 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mike Brearley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.