Michael Colin Cowdrey grew up batting at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury in the 1950s, so he knew all about the Elysian Fields as a young man. Now that he has passed away, he can join the ghosts of other run-stealers as they flicker to and fro. For those of a certain age, Cowdrey’s cover drive, recollected through the haze of an August afternoon, was more than a thing of beauty. It was, and it remains, a stroke to unlock the memory; a memory, intangible yet always present, of the game as it was and as it can be, like some promise of endless summer.
That Cowdrey belonged to a gentler age is a given, and he was its Don Quixote: courtly, chivalrous, modest. Of the English batsmen who grew to maturity in that much misunderstood decade, Peter May was the most gifted, Tom Graveney the most elegant, Ken Barrington the most stubborn and Cowdrey the most puzzling. He shared May’s gifts and Graveney’s elegance but there was a diffidence in his manner that he could never quite overcome. Team-mates told him, and opponents knew, that he never understood how good he really was. Figures give some indication of his talent.
He was the first cricketer to play one hundred Tests and he marked that hundreth appearance by scoring a hundred against Australia. No Englishman has made more than his twenty-two Test hundreds, or held more catches (120). Only three England players have exceeded his aggregate of 114 caps. He made more tours to Australia, six, than any other player, English or otherwise, and he took six of his Test hundreds off the West Indies. He led England twenty-seven times between 1960 and 1969 and, in all first-class cricket, he made 42,719 runs in a career that began in 1950, when he was seventeen and ended twenty-six years later.
Cowdrey’s first Australian visit, in 1954–55, was disrupted by the death of his father, who had pointedly given him those famous initials: M.C.C. Leonard Hutton, as he then was, took the young man under his wing and the first of Cowdrey’s Test centuries came on that tour, at Melbourne. His last trip, twenty years later, was an ordeal that no batsman of forty-one should have to endure. On hard, bouncy pitches he went in first against Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, who bowled faster on that tour than anybody has done, before or since. Cowdrey’s response was to introduce himself in the middle to Thomson thus: ‘How do you do? My name’s Cowdrey.’
Yes, he belonged to a gentler age but it would be wrong to suggest that Cowdrey was an innocent. There was nothing half-baked about the bowlers he faced and, on the famous occasion in 1963 at Lord’s, when he went out to face a rampant Wes Hall with his broken arm in plaster, he demonstrated considerable courage. Even in his twilight years, in 1975, he was a fine enough batsman to make a century at Canterbury against the touring Australians. A year later he played his last game for Kent, the county he captained for fifteen consecutive seasons, and upon his retirement he published a best-selling autobiography. At the time there was no figure more closely identified with English cricket. He remained active in the last two decades of his life. M.C.C. conferred the presidency of the club upon him and, as chairman of the International Cricket Council, he presented himself as a conciliator in a rapidly changing cricketing world. Indeed, as Graeme Wright, the editor of Wisden, wrote of Cowdrey’s travels: ‘He has spent more time on the road than the Grateful Dead.’
When Cowdrey began his career the professional apartheid of gentlemen and players was still in existence, and a club such as Yorkshire could sack a bowler as fine as Johnny Wardle for comments he made in a book and then prevent him from playing for any other county. Those were not always the good old days. But when cricket-lovers summon up an image of Cowdrey in full sail, and they will, in their thousands, they may recall a kinder, gentler, less hysterical game, peopled by players who laughed more than they scowled. For many the passing of this much-loved man will carry them back down ‘the happy highways where I went, and cannot come again’.
Colin Cowdrey was a dear friend and the news of his death came as a great personal blow, as I know it did to his many friends. He was a man who stood for all that is best in cricket, as a great player and then, after he had stopped playing, as an administrator. He never spared himself in working for the good of the game at every level. Last year he introduced a debate in the House of Lords on the development of excellence in sport in Britain. Colin didn’t often sound passionate, but on this occasion he spoke with rare passion about widening opportunities for young people.
When I was seventeen, I went to Lord’s Cricket Ground and watched one of the schools matches that used to happen there. It was Clifton against Tonbridge and this tubby boy of thirteen was bowling leg-spinners and googlies for Tonbridge. He took eight wickets in the match and scored 75 and 44 against the eighteen-year-olds. He bowled quite beautifully – with a skill that he never quite recovered later on. All the cricket world knew about this prodigy – and often doubted whether such precocious talent would bring any lasting achievements. In the event Colin lasted longer in Test cricket than anyone of our generation. We were on opposite sides at Oxford and Cambridge and for Kent and Sussex, and we batted together in a number of matches for England. My mother and Colin’s mother watched cricket together, finding warmth on cold days from a rug that Colin’s mother had knitted.
The final comeback of my unusual cricket career was the 1962–63 tour of Australia, with Ted Dexter as captain. Colin and I were very close by this time. We took time each week to talk and share our faith, pray and read the Bible together. There were many ups and downs for me as a player on that tour but one of the ups was in the Melbourne Test, which we won. Colin and I had a partnership when we ran a lot of short singles together. He wasn’t athletic, though he was a natural ball-games player. He was quite a solid figure who would not have won any races, but he was the best runner between wickets I batted with. I made up my mind that if he called me for a run I would always go, and would never consider sending him back. He was the only player whose judgment I reckoned I could trust enough to do that – and we never got into trouble.
Three years ago, after I had retired from Liverpool, Colin said to my wife, Grace, that he wanted to give us a tree to celebrate our retirement and to remember our Melbourne partnership. Now at the bottom of our garden there is a red acer, ‘Crimson King’, which is a lovely reminder to us of Colin and his friendship. On the Sunday of that Test match, I preached at a sportsmen’s service in Melbourne Cathedral: Brian Booth, of Australia, read one lesson and Colin read the other. During the match three centuries were scored – made by the three of us who had taken part in the service. Afterwards Bobby Simpson said to me: ‘I’m beginning to think that after all there must be something in this that I didn’t know about.’
Colin Cowdrey was a fine catcher close to the wicket. He took great pleasure in making no fuss about it. He would catch the ball and almost look the other way as though nothing had happened. He was, too, a careful student of the game. Len Hutton was his captain when he was a very young member of the England side in 1954 and he learnt a great deal from the way Len batted and thought about the game. I think there were times when, as a batsman, Colin became introspective; given the skill he possessed, there were occasions when he might have dominated bowlers, rather than allow them to crowd the fielders round him. That was perhaps part of his overmodest character. He was never a domineering person.
He showed me the form of service used at his mother’s funeral, not many years ago; at the end there was a quotation of something she had said to her grandchildren and the last words were ‘and work hard’. I realised that was how Colin had been brought up, with a massive work ethic and tremendous sense of duty. I understand that his ambition in his last few days was to ‘make it’ to a dinner that was raising charitable funds for the hospital where he had been treated. He made it to the dinner just two or three days before he died. That was characteristic in that he found it very difficult to say no if he was asked to do something. He had a powerful sense of obligation.
He would keep me posted about the game. We had many discussions about England’s struggles or successes. As a bishop I sat in the House of Lords as a ‘Prelate’, and then when I was made a life peer there was the question of my being reintroduced. To do that you need two supporters. I talked to Garter, King of Arms, and told him I had thought of asking Lord Runcie and Lord Cowdrey to be my supporters. He thought for a moment and said: ‘Yes, God – and cricket. I think that would do very well.’
When Colin chaired the International Cricket Council, he gave himself an exhausting schedule, travelling the world. He liked to do business by personal conversation. He asked me if I thought it was still possible to speak of ‘the spirit of the game’. I said I thought it could and should be. Colin fought for the way of playing hard but fair that makes up the spirit of the game. He was keen to see the ‘code of practice’ for cricketers adopted, that is now attached to the Laws of cricket.
He was a very warm friend to us. Like other friends of his, we would receive personal, handwritten notes of encouragement at special times in our lives. They meant a lot to us. On the 1962–63 tour there was a reception for the team and supporters. The hostess had organised the meal meticulously, so that everyone had to change tables after each course; she announced firmly: ‘Nobody is to sit next to anybody they know.’ Colin was in the middle of a conversation with my wife and said: ‘We needn’t take any notice of that, need we?’ He was a warm person, very ‘person-oriented’, a conservative figure who loved traditions and fought for them. He was a man of integrity and of enthusiasm and of deep Christian faith. In his dealings with people he combined personal warmth with a keen attention to detail – a rare combination.
Michael Colin Cowdrey: b Ootacamund, India, 24 December 1932; d 4 December 2000