A throng of the great and good of cricket mingled yesterday with politicians, show business celebrities and ordinary cricket fans for a chance to bid a fond farewell to one of the sport's great batsmen and cavaliers.
``To watch Denis Compton bat on a good day was to know what joy was,'' John Major said after the service. ``He was a great enemy and a great mate,'' said Keith Miller, the 77-year-old former Australian all-rounder and scourge of England's post-war cricket.
More than 2,000 people crammed into every niche and aisle and the number turned away after applying for tickets exceeded any memorial service held there since that of the broadcaster Richard Dimbleby in 1966.
It is believed that tickets for the event, free to those lucky enough to be allocated them, were changing hands for £50 outside the Abbey. There had been 3,000 applications for tickets. Of the successful applicants, 700 were people recommended by either the family or Middlesex County Cricket Club, and the rest were members of the public who got tickets on a first-come, first-served basis.
Compton, who died on St George's Day, aged 78, still holds the record for the number of runs scored in an English season, 3,816 for Middlesex at an average of more than 90, in 1947.
He was also a football international, winning FA Cup and league championship medals with Arsenal and 12 wartime caps for England on the wing. His widow, Christine, his third wife, said she had been ``amazed'' by the number of people who went to the service. ``I knew he was a big favourite to many people but I didn't know he was that big,'' she said.
Tributes to Compton were paid by both sports. Peter Hill-Wood, the chairman of Arsenal, read a lesson - ``Let us now praise famous men'' from Ecclesiaticus, and J J Warr, Compton's county captain and a former president of the MCC, gave the address.
Mr Warr said ``Compo'', as he was known to all his friends, had a great natural talent for sport but was not the most industrious of people off the pitch. ``I remember when Ted Heath introduced the three-day week, I asked Compo how he was going to cope and he said: 'I am not going to work an extra day for anybody','' Mr Warr said to laughter around the Abbey.
``If he had been alive during the Civil War, I am sure he would have been a cavalier. He certainly had a cavalier approach to two things: money and honours. The ribbon to his CBE was last seen acting as a temporary lead around the neck of Benjy, his Old English sheepdog.''
Lord Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said prayers in the cricketer's memory. Richard Compton, his second son from his second marriage, read a lesson from St Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. After the service, Richard, 41, from Durban, South Africa, said: ``It is very moving to see all these people who have come here to remember Dad and to know that so many more were turned away.''
Cricketing champions of the past included Lord Cowdrey, who said Compton had displayed ``wonderful mastery and no arrogance'', and there was a strong representation of the current Middlesex team led by Mike Gatting and Mark Ramprakash, the former and present captains.
One man from Edgware, north London, who did not want to be named but described himself as ``an ordinary ageing cricket supporter'', said: ``I came as a small way of saying thank you for the way he lit up those gloomy post-war years with his cricket and his character.''