WINTER 13
success story
SIXTY SIX AND NOT OUT The once renowned cricketer and international badminton coach Maurice Robinson died in 1994. But the eponymous sports shop he opened in 1948 is still going strong in the hands of Wendy Bill, his daughter. Ros Dodd reports Sixty six years ago, international badminton personalities Maurice and Cicely Robinson opened a sports shop in Kings Heath, Birmingham. Today, Maurice Robinson Sports is still there, now specialising in racquets and swimwear. It is the only retailer of its kind in the Midlands and one of the oldest independent sports shops in the UK. It remains a family business: Wendy Bill, Maurice and Cicely’s daughter, has worked there for 40 years and now manages it, carrying on her father’s legacy. Shops and businesses have come and gone in York Road – part of the Kings Heath Birmingham Improvement District (BID) – but Maurice Robinson Sports has not only survived, it has expanded into adjoining premises either side of the original retail outlet and now attracts customers from all over Britain and abroad. “The shop has gone from being a general sports shop, where we sold everything sportsrelated, including fishing tackle, to being much more of a specialist shop,” explains Bill, herself a former county tennis player. “With every product, there’s so much more choice these days. For example, we used to sell half a dozen badminton racquets; now we sell 150. It’s the same with tennis racquets: if there were 25 on sale before, now there are about 250.”
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The shop also runs a racquet-stringing service. “We do a lot of stringing for international badminton players, and professional tennis player Dan Evans, who is ranked number six in Britain, is also a customer.” Not many of today’s customers will remember Maurice Robinson, and few will know anything of his glittering sporting career. Maurice was born in Northern Ireland and came to Birmingham just before the start of World War Two as an apprentice professional cricketer with Warwickshire. “He also played badminton,” recalls Bill, “and just round the corner from Edgbaston, at St Ambrose Church Hall, was a badminton court and it was here he met my mother, who was a very good badminton player and played for England in 1953.” When war broke out, Maurice joined the RAF and was made a Sergeant Major, training troops first in Weston-super-Mare and then in India. While stationed in Hyderabad, he was summoned by the Nizam of Hyderabad to coach his daughters in badminton. When he returned to Britain in 1946, Maurice was stationed in St Athan, South Wales and Glamorgan asked if he would play cricket for them while he was there. An all-rounder, Maurice won his county cap in
his debut season with Glamorgan; in 1949 he scored a career-best 190 against Hampshire at Bournemouth while sharing what still stands as a club record fifth-wicket partnership of 264 with Stan Montgomery. Bill adds: “He loved playing for Glamorgan and continued to do so for a while even after he was demobbed and returned to Birmingham, where he also played for Warwickshire until 1952.” Maurice and Cicely – she’s still alive aged 96 and is Britain’s oldest surviving international badminton player – opened the sports shop in November 1948. “It was quite ‘the thing’ in those days for sportsmen to open shops and he’d worked for a while in a sports shop in Cardiff,” says Bill. “My mother, who was previously a company secretary, ran it with him.” Cicely was often left in charge of the shop, as Maurice concentrated more and more on badminton coaching, travelling the world to train some of the it’s top players. “He was a world-renowned coach and became national coach for both Holland and Germany. He went to the 1972 Munich Olympics with the Dutch badminton team and witnessed the kidnapping of 11 members of the Israeli team, who were eventually killed.” Maurice also did a three-month coaching >>
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BUSINESS QUARTER | WINTER 13