Gentleman & Player

Andrew Murtagh

Description

Colin Cowdrey is remembered for the elegance of his strokeplay; but there was more to this complex man than a classical cover drive. Successes were numerous: 114 Test matches, 22 Test hundreds, 100 first-class centuries, countless famous victories and unforgettable innings. There was controversy and disappointment too, chief among them being repeated snubs for the England captaincy and the D'Oliveira Affair. Cowdrey was involved in three of England's most memorable Tests: Lord's in 1963 against the West Indies, batting at 11 with his arm in plaster, two balls left and all four results possible; Trinidad in 1968 in which England secured a famous victory against the West Indies; and The Oval in 1968 when England gained an improbable final-over win against Australia. In later life, he shone as an administrative leader - as president of Kent and of the MCC, and as chairman of the ICC - and was made a Lord. Sir Garry Sobers spoke for many when he said at his memorial service, "Colin Cowdrey was a great man."

Sujets

• Críquet
• Cricket

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785313455
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2017
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Andrew Murtagh, 2017
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library.
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-322-6
eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-345-5
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Contents
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction
Acknowledgements
1. A Solitary Childhood
2. Tonbridge School 1946-51
3. From Brasenose to Brisbane
4. Bookends of a Test career
5. Ever the Bridesmaid
6. Man of Kent
7. Those Two Imposters: Triumph and Disaster
8. The Long Goodbye
Epilogue
Photographs
This book is for my brother, Dominic, who really was Colin Cowdrey in those interminable cricket matches in the back garden
Don Bradman was a great batsman. Colin Cowdrey was a great man.
Sir Garry Sobers on why he had chosen to attend Cowdrey s memorial service and not Bradman s.
Foreword
Tribute to the Life of the Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge, CBE
By the Rt Hon John Major, CH, MP
Westminster Abbey
Friday 30 March, 2001
T HERE is a moment, when someone dies, when raw emotion has a way of letting you know just how much they meant to you. When Michael Ancram phoned me with the news, I had a prickling in the eye that came unbidden and would not go away. No more Colin. Millions - some of whom had never met him - felt the same.
To those millions, Colin was one of the world s greatest cricketers. To those of us who knew him, he was one of the world s loveliest of men. That is why this Abbey could have been filled many times over.
Letters to the family came pouring in from all over the world:
From Australia:
When one thinks of Colin Cowdrey, one thinks of grace, elegance - and England.
From India:
Sad to see you go, Mr Colin. We loved you in India.
From Sydney came a prophecy, which I hope is true:
Bowlers, beware! The great firm of Cowdrey and May are about to renew their partnership!
There were many more such affectionate letters from all those whose lives Colin had touched.
It s not that Colin was a great cricketer - though that he was: the prodigious talent of the boy ripened, to make the man, the greatest pear-shaped batsman of our time. Although on a bad day he could have the cricketing equivalent of writer s block, most of his batting was pure poetry.
At Melbourne, aged 21, he scored a hundred for England that old men still babble about. I heard some of that innings over the static in the middle of the night - my ear pressed to the radio to avoid waking my parents who thought that a ten-year-old should be asleep. Lovely people, my parents - but they never did understand cricket.
Colin was a special man too. In the early 1990s he came to see me at Number 10 with some South African officials. As we sat in my study, beneath a portrait of W.G. Grace, he asked me to speak to some Commonwealth heads of government to help South Africa back into the world game. I did. They were admitted: but it was Colin s love of cricket that was the driving force.
He had a great affinity for the young. He helped me launch a sports initiative at a London stadium, following which we had an impromptu game of cricket with a veritable United Nations of children. An Indian boy bowled; I kept wicket; Colin batted and hit up a catch to a Jamaican girl. As she caught the ball, he cheered, Well played. Bravo! Well played - an encouragement he used a thousand times a year. The girl skipped up and down, eyes shining and pigtails flying. Once again, Colin had used that extraordinary gift he had for making anyone in his company feel 100 feet tall. If I ever saw the joy of life, I saw it then. It was a very happy moment.
As Christopher has already said, Colin was a great writer of notes and a world-class user of the telephone. Whenever I faced political difficulty, Colin would be there. So we were in touch a lot.
The phone would ring and a voice would say, Morning, Skipper - Cowdrey here. Or there d be a note - many notes. They were always upbeat. Bravo! Well played. 100 not out, he d write - even if I had been bowled out for nought.
Sometimes if life was more than usually turbulent, he would phone those closest to me at Number 10 and ask if he could pop in for a drink.
For Colin, the answer was always yes. And when I walked into my flat above Number 10, late at night, he d often be there - tumbler of whisky in hand - his gently smiling face and wise words bringing sanity and common sense to the frenetic world of politics. Colin never talked of this publicly - nor did I, before now. But it illustrates the kind of man he was: a friend in bad times as well as good. Truly a man for all seasons.
Colin s gift for letter-writing was no doubt hereditary. There is a letter written from Malabar, India, in October 1940, from Colin s mother, Molly, which paints a wonderful portrait of a happy cricket-mad boy enjoying himself and loving cricket. And have you noticed his initials? Molly wrote. MCC. How proud she would have been of the extraordinary man her boy grew up to be.
But then family pride is a Cowdrey trait. Colin always spoke with such affection for Chris, Jeremy, Carol and Graham and his years with Penny. He was so proud of all their achievements - whether on or off the cricket field - with hundreds of stories which he would recount with an air of wonder that he and Penny should have produced such a talented crew.
And his joy over Anne and her horses bubbled over like uncorked champagne. He would phone me when a horse won. She s done it! Done what? Won. Won what? The race ... Anne s won. And after a while even the horse got some credit too.
Colin is a loss to us all, but the greatest loss is to his family.
A modest man, blessed with the gift of friendship. A gentle man with a God-given talent. Kipling was right, If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch.
Colin never lost it.
In life, said a lesser poet than Kipling, it matters not who wins or loses, but how the game is played. And how well Colin played it.
Captain of Kent and England; president of Kent and MCC; a Commander of the British Empire; a Knight of the British Empire; a Peer of the Realm. A man of Kent who left his mark on so many lives and had friends and admirers in every corner of the world.
And when Colin died, the England team wore black armbands for him and beat Pakistan in the gathering gloom in Karachi. As the unlikely victory neared, Colin s family and friends had returned from his funeral service and were gathered in his study at Angmering cheering them on. How he would have loved it. And how we missed him.
The day before he died, Colin was due to attend a meeting of the Master s Club, followed by lunch at The Oval - to honour Jack Hobbs - the man known universally in cricket as The Master . He couldn t make it and sent a note, It is with great regret that I cannot be at The Oval today to celebrate The Master s Birthday. He went on, What a magnificent season Surrey have had. Many, many congratulations.
This was a characteristically gracious ending to a note that may well have been the last he wrote before the Young Master went off to join the Old Master, at a far Higher Table than The Oval.
It s hard to believe we will no longer hear his voice at the end of the phone. Nor be cheered by the notes he would send. But yet - Colin isn t gone. How can he be when he is in our mind, we can hear his voice and see his face? No man is gone while those who knew him - and the family who loved him - remember and talk of him. He left us too soon. For once, that immaculate timing was out - but it was a gem of an innings.
Colin played life as he played cricket: with a clear eye, a straight bat, and a cover drive from heaven. On the field and off it he was a true Corinthian. And when the Umpire of Life gave him out he went, without complaint and without rancour, to join so many of his old friends.
As for those he has left behind, we are blessed with an abundance of happy memories of the times we shared together. Well played, Colin. Bravo. Well played.
(Reproduced by kind permission of Sir John Major)
Introduction
M AY S BOUNTY. Can there ever have been a more enchanting name for a cricket ground? It might just as easily have served as a title of a sonnet by Keats or the subject of a lyrical ballad by Wordsworth. But no, it is a cricket ground located in north Hampshire, donated by Lt Col John May, a member of a famous Basingstoke brewery family, to the local community for the purposes of sporting activity.
Cricket has been played there since the mid-17th century and it is currently home to Basingstoke and North Hants Cricket Club. From 1966 to 2000, Hampshire played a couple of their home games there every year.
A number of counties had similar festival weeks away from headquarters. Scarborough, Harrogate, Tunbridge Wells, Hastings, Eastbourne, Bournemouth, Bath, Cheltenham and Guildford were once as much of the first-class game as Lord s, Old Trafford and Trent Bridge but have now sadly fallen out of favour as being uneconomic.
Basingstoke Week was one such fixed point in the calendar, not greatly loved of the players, largely because of the cramped and spartan changing facilities, with a wooden floor that had more splinters than the gun deck of HMS Victory at the battle of Trafalgar. Howe