Australia 1954/55
Australia 1974/75
‘If I could watch one innings again, it would be Cowdrey’s first hundred at Melbourne, on Hutton’s tour.’
John Woodcock
THE inclusion of the young Colin Cowdrey, straight out of university, for the MCC tour to Australia in 1954/55 was not the most contentious decision by the national selectors, surprising though it was.
In truth, controversy about the choice of captain and the composition of the party had been rumbling on for most of the summer. Len Hutton was the first professional to be appointed captain of England and that in itself was a break with tradition which had not met with wholehearted approval. But he had wrestled the Ashes back from Australia the previous summer for the first time since the infamous Bodyline series 20 years before and thus his position as captain was secure – or so you would have thought.
However, after a tour of the West Indies that had its fractious moments that winter, in which the England players, it was alleged, had presented a less than flattering image of their country to their hosts, the grumbles about a professional leading the side had started to resurface. Furthermore, Hutton, never the most physically robust person, had declared himself unfit for the second and third Tests that summer, against the Pakistanis.
The anti-Hutton cabal at Lord’s had seized their moment and appointed the amateur, David Sheppard, as captain in his place. Sheppard was already well advanced on the clerical career that would see him eventually becoming Bishop of Liverpool, but he had taken temporary leave of his episcopal duties to put himself in the frame to lead the side to Australia. He had been asked to make himself available so he did. But Hutton was a Yorkshireman and he was not going to be as easily sidelined as that. He had been injured, not sacked, and the job of England captain was still his. Public opinion was on his side and eventually the Sheppard apostles admitted defeat and withdrew.
Hutton was the general of his army and he knew what soldiers he was going to take with him. It was a popular opinion at the time that one of these favoured warriors of Hutton’s was Colin Cowdrey. He had been so impressed with the young man’s batting on the occasions that he had seen him play, mostly in opposition, that he had insisted on his name being put forward. Not so, he said later. He may have been taken with Colin’s technique and temperament but he was not at all convinced that an Oxford undergraduate was physically and mentally ready for the heat of battle Down Under.
He had to be persuaded and it was the other members of the selection panel, principally Harry Altham, who did the persuading. Perhaps Hutton gave way and acceded to their petitions because he had already got what he wanted.
Like any good general, he had reconnoitred the terrain, he had assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy forces, he had handpicked his troops, and he had a plan. Pace was the key. Actually, there was nothing particularly radical about that. Australian pitches favoured fast bowling and he was as aware of that as anyone, having suffered at the hands of Lindwall and Miller often enough.
But on this occasion, he had an ace up his sleeve, a secret weapon, if you like, and his name was Frank Tyson. Although a bit of an unknown quantity nationally, Tyson’s reputation for extreme pace was already a talking point among his opponents on the county circuit. Earlier that summer, he had performed the extraordinary feat of hitting the sightscreen at Old Trafford on the full as a short ball sailed over the wicketkeeper’s head. Colin had faced him at Maidstone only weeks before and could testify to the genuine hostility of the Northamptonshire speed merchant. No, Hutton knew exactly what he was after. To him, the selection of Tyson was no gamble.
As it happened, David Sheppard did not tour. If he was not required to captain, he wasn’t interested in going and thus resumed his ministry. As for the young, untested Colin Cowdrey, there were one or two voices raised for his inclusion ‘for the future’ but as Colin himself wrote, ‘Realistically, I had no chance.’
His form for Kent had been patchy – he had still not scored a hundred for his county – and if he ever thought he was on anybody’s team sheet of ‘possibles’, he would have convinced himself that he was well down the list. However, as he was making his way across the car park at Blackheath at the conclusion of the match against Surrey in late July to pack his bag in the boot for the trip to Northampton, he was aware that the touring party for Australia was about to be announced on the 6pm news. He was interested, of course, but his interest was no more than academic.
In his unpublished notes, this is how he described what happened next, ‘At the end of the introductory headlines I heard, “There are several surprises in the MCC touring party to Australia under the captaincy of Len Hutton.” By chance the Surrey team had arrived en masse to listen to the announcement and I saw Peter May and Alec Bedser getting into a car. They were certainties. This was confirmed in the next few moments. As was other staggering news. I had been selected.
‘I did not know where to look, where to hide. Feeling hugely embarrassed, I hopped into the back of Arthur Phebey’s car. I could not wait for us to get moving as the other selections were beginning to sink in. Standing in the car park, just a few yards away, were Tony Lock and Jim Laker. Both had been sensationally omitted...There was no room either for Arthur McIntyre, who everybody had expected to go as Godfrey Evans’s deputy. He was another one in that Blackheath car park that fateful day.’
As he headed north, with Phebey at the wheel and Derk Ufton alongside, conversation inevitably swirled around those contentious omissions. It was a while before they realised that Fred Trueman had been left out too. ‘My brain was in a whirl,’ Colin wrote. ‘Australia! How extraordinary that they should want me to go to Australia.’ Over the coming days and weeks, he was not the only one who expressed surprise. In fact, there was something of a press storm and not for the last time, Colin was right in the middle of it.
In one of my conversations with Jim Parks, Colin’s old friend, the following reference to the selection of this touring party caught me on the hop. ‘Of course, you know it was between me and Colin,’ Jim suddenly announced. I put down my mug of coffee. What do you mean, Jim? ‘The batting place on that tour. I’d been picked for the third Test that summer against Pakistan. I was dropped, Colin got in for the fourth Test and he was on the boat.’
There are two observations I should like to make about this. First, I did not know that Jim had made his Test debut way back in 1954. Only one match, mind you. He had to wait until 1960 before he got his second, against the West Indies. He marked the occasion by scoring an undefeated 101. Secondly, he made this reference to Colin’s selection ahead of him without the slightest hint of rancour. ‘Well, it could hardly be said they made the wrong choice,’ he grinned. But to be dropped after only one match – that was a bit harsh, wasn’t it? He gave a shrug and a little smile. There was no need for him to add anything; that was the way things were done in those days.
A quick glance at their respective figures for 1954 would suggest that he might have had a point. Parks scored 1,649 runs for the season at 36.64; Cowdrey scored 513 at 28.50. But the selectors were adamant that he was the right choice – ‘When in doubt, one must back class,’ one of them, Gubby Allen, remarked – and Hutton, initially sceptical, had been persuaded. Alan Ross, The Observer’s cricket correspondent, wrote of Cowdrey’s selection, ‘Anyone who saw him could hardly doubt he is a vintage player, mature beyond his years...Jim Parks was the probable alternative but Cowdrey is to him as burgundy to a sparkling hock and for a tour of this kind, body is preferable to fizz.’
A trifle hard on my friend opposite me, sipping his coffee, but as we shall see, Jim would have his time in the sun at a later date. Now was Colin’s moment and he was resolved to seize it.
In fact, Jim’s memory had let him down slightly. Colin was not picked for the fourth Test that summer; he was 12th man. The touring party had been announced on 27 July, which seems extraordinarily early, seeing as the team was not scheduled to leave England until mid-September, with a large chunk of the season still to go, to say nothing of the final Test of the Pakistan series. This was at The Oval and as Laker and Lock had been overlooked for the tour to Australia, they were both omitted from the team to play in this deciding match of the rubber. To go into a Test match in England without Laker and Lock – and on their home ground – seems perplexing to say the least but this was a season of surprises. Pakistan won the match – their first Test victory in England – to square the series. Any comment the Surrey spin twins may have made about that remains unrecorded.
Although Colin was not going to play, it was felt that it would be a good idea for him to act as 12th man to get a feel of what it was like to be involved in a Test match. As it happened, he was given little opportunity to savour the atmosphere. He suffered a reaction to the injections he had just been given for the Australian tour and spent most of the game in bed. Why am I not wholly surprised by that? Somehow, I can’t picture Colin carrying the drinks.
So, once the last rites of an unusual season were concluded, instead of greeting the head porter at The Lodge of Brasenose College at the start of a new term, Colin shook hands with the captain of SS Orsova who welcomed the MCC team aboard at the start of their voyage to Australia. Coincidentally, the span of this brand new ocean liner’s seafaring service was to run exactly parallel to Colin’s Test career. It had only recently made its maiden voyage. This was Colin’s first in the colours of MCC. SS Orsova was decommissioned and broken up in 1974. Colin was not broken up in 1974, I am pleased to report, but it was the last time he played for England.
There was another accidental connection on that voyage, which we will come to shortly. Colin’s parents had come to Tilbury to see their son off. While they were saying their goodbyes, Len Hutton took Ernest Cowdrey aside and talked earnestly to him, if you will forgive the pun, for 20 minutes or so. It was only later that Colin found out what was being said. With a kindness and solicitude that belied his plain-speaking persona, Hutton was assuring Ernest that he would keep an eye on his son and do his best to look after him.
Those who knew Hutton and played under him would not have been surprised. He was as hard as nails on the pitch but he had a soft side to him and could be surprisingly emotional. Colin had cause to be grateful for his captain’s thoughtfulness much sooner than he anticipated.
Among the dignitaries and well-wishers thronging the dockside as the MCC team embarked was a middle-aged man, spare of frame and prominent of nose. He was seen to engage the young Cowdrey in deep and urgent conversation. Part of what he said was overheard by some of Colin’s team-mates. ‘When you get to Australia, just remember one thing, Cowdrey – hate the bastards!’ Who was that, Colin demanded later, to be informed it was Douglas Jardine.
If he had any doubt of the magnitude of the task ahead, the presence there of the last man to captain an Ashes-winning team in Australia 20 years previously, albeit in highly controversial circumstances, would have dispelled it. Apparently, he had come down to Tilbury for the specific purpose of seeing Colin off. ‘The least I could do for a fellow Oxford man,’ he said. He gave the young man further advice, ‘Don’t aim to hook too early. Not only does the ball skid through, it hits you on the foot – play it wide of mid-on.’ At which point, the bells sounded throughout the ship and those not sailing were urged to go ashore. It did not escape the attention of several of the travelling press corps that Tilbury was the scene of Elizabeth I’s famous speech to her troops before the expected invasion by the Spanish Armada (‘I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too’).
Was Hutton about to employ the same rallying call to his troops? It seemed not. His style was quite different but no less effective. Colin, among others, came to appreciate his dry sense of humour, his tactical acumen, his absolute dedication to the cause and his peerless – and courageous – batsmanship. But he was not one for grand speeches.
Life on board SS Orsova was far from the boot camp favoured by modern sides as preparation for an arduous series. Colin described it as a ‘comfortable, even luxurious voyage’ though he admitted to a certain amount of bashfulness in the company of so many well-known players. Time, of which there was a lot on such a journey, slowly broke down the barriers. From when anchor was weighed in the Thames Estuary to the eve of first Test in Australia, it would be 71 days.
On board was John Woodcock, a cub reporter for The Times, entrusted with his first major assignment overseas with MCC as cricket correspondent. He told me, when I made a pilgrimage down to his delightful cottage in Longparish in Hampshire, that Hutton, as a professional captain, made sure that co-existence with the amateurs in the party, of whom there were five, Cowdrey included, was seamless. As it should be, he added. And thereafter, as long as the distinction survived, it always was.
In a piece written for The Cricketer in 2005 celebrating the 50th anniversary of that famous tour, Woodcock remembered the long, leisurely days aboard ship, ‘It was more a rest after the relentless English season, and for the chance to talk cricket, than as a bonding exercise, that the voyage was beneficial. It was tedious at times but incredibly spoiling: comforts galore, the stirrings of romance and the journalistic bliss of an unexpected office.’
Slowly, Colin relaxed. Inevitably, though unconsciously, the two rookies were drawn to each other to form a friendship that was to last Colin’s lifetime. ‘I got to know him well,’ said Woodcock. ‘I became very fond of him. That didn’t mean I couldn’t criticise him sometimes, which I did. I was critical of him in India, for example, in the 1963/64 series, when he seemed to bat without ambition. It was surprising really, because from the start of his career to the end, he had so much ability that he could play anything. But sometimes, through inclination, he didn’t.’
Tell me about the relationship the accompanying press corps had with the players. ‘Not the same as it is these days. We became friends really, sometimes close friends. On board, and later, travelling around the country, it was almost as if we were one big family on a great adventure. Did that mean we became too close? Possibly. But there was a certain amount of trust between the two sides, which sadly seems to have been lost nowadays. We felt free to pass comment on the cricket, bad or good, but the...hah, how shall we call it, the extra-curricular activities were off limits.’
That is not the first time I’ve heard such sentiments uttered about journalists from a bygone era. Tom Graveney told me that the press on those trips comprised cricket reporters, not newshounds. He was unsure quite when the balance shifted from pure cricket reporting to the pursuit of gossip and scandal but once it happened, the relationship between player and reporter changed forever.
It was my good fortune that during one of Jeremy Cowdrey’s periodic rummages in his loft through his father’s personal effects, he unearthed Colin’s diary of this trip. It is written on pages that you only find in those old school exercise books, bound and held together with string. Much like his school diary, it is full of commonplace record and observation but it occasionally yields snippets of information that are pure gold dust.
For a start, Colin has manifestly grown up. His comments reveal a maturity that is perforce lacking in the commentary of his school life. Furthermore, there are flashes of humour, heralding the masterful light touch as a witty public speaker for which he became renowned. He notes down jokes that he has heard, nothing to do with the tour or the players necessarily, almost as if he is putting them in safe keeping, to be wheeled out at a later date. One such example is a story of a previous MCC tour to the West Indies. At the bottom of a menu at the team’s hotel was printed this reassuring guarantee: The water has been passed by the manager.
The diary is more lively, too, in its tone; he seems more aware of his audience, that is if he had any idea that one day it might see the light of day. Crucially, for my purposes, it offers a fascinating glimpse into life on board and on the road, at a time when travel was slower and more leisurely. Plainly, there was time to kill during the long sea voyage, which means that a disproportionate amount of the diary’s contents are concerned with what happened before they reached Australia. Thereafter, it becomes more rushed and few details emerge of the actual Tests, other than scores and brief summaries of the day’s play. But that is all right. I can look up Wisden for the scorecards but I cannot, except through Colin’s eyes, get an impression of his team-mates and what they did away from the cricket. And it is often here with no more than a hint or a suggestion, the value of his diary lies.
The Bay of Biscay, as is its wont, tested the sea legs of the party. All were at one stage or another afflicted by seasickness. All that is except Colin. ‘PBH spends all day in bed. Evans better. He’s off that banana diet the ship’s doctor prescribed. Spots attractive twins and he’s off!’ When Evans was in bed, ill, you understand, Reg Simpson went to visit him in his cabin. He was ticked off by a steward, ‘Give the cricketers a break.’ Colin was wryly amused by the others’ assessment of their fellow Yorkshireman, Bob Appleyard, ‘There’s only one ’ead bigger than Applecart’s and that’s Birken’ead!’
Hutton was always taking individual members of his team aside for a private chat. The young Cowdrey was no exception. ‘Advice from Len,’ he writes. ‘You want to make up your mind how you’re going to play. Set your mind to it with the utmost confidence and don’t interfere with it much. Listening to people’s advice on wickets etc only gets you more confused. I used to do that, asking all sorts of people, Jack Hobbs, Patsy Hendren etc and it was disrupting.’
Let no one say that Colin did not listen to, and act on, his captain’s words. It was clear that Hutton, while the rest of his team were relaxing and enjoying the entertainment and activities on board, was restlessly planning for the campaign ahead.
Colin may have set great store by the received wisdom of Hutton but he did not neglect the spiritual guidance to which he had become disposed. He was a regular participant at religious services on board, often ‘accompanied by EWS’. Jim Swanton, The Daily Telegraph cricket correspondent, a fellow man of Kent, was to become a devotee of Colin’s, never failing to sing his praises or fight his corner. Quite what Colin thought of this patronage he never said. Embarrassed would be my guess. He always passes comment on the service, just as he did when he was at school. ‘Lovely church service taken by the Captain,’ he writes. And then he adds a droll comment. ‘Attendance was sparse. Everybody suffering from Press party last night.’
The warmth and the calmer seas of the Mediterranean came as a welcome change from the storms in the Bay of Biscay. ‘Awoke to a terrible stench coming through the portholes – Naples!’ See Naples and die, goes the old saying. For one poor passenger, this was tragically prescient. ‘Terrible drivers the Italians. Indeed one of our passengers was killed and the wretched Captain had to cable the terrible news to his wife and small child.’
There was time amid the hurly-burly of their short stay ashore for a bit of peaceful reflection. ‘Len took a party of Yorkshiremen to pay homage at Hedley Verity’s grave.’ Verity, one of the game’s finest slow left-arm bowlers before the war, was a captain in the Green Howards when he was hit in the chest by shrapnel in the Sicily campaign. Taken prisoner, he was moved to hospital in Naples, where he died of his wounds. Hutton was close to Verity and respected him as a man as well as a cricketer. He ensured that they laid a wreath, a single white rose and a Yorkshire scarf at the grave.
As was the custom, MCC stopped off en route in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, to play what Woodcock called a ‘picnic’ game in Colombo. Colin thought it no picnic – he found it disconcerting to play a game of cricket so soon after disembarking after a long sea voyage, ‘The ground seemed to be swaying under my feet,’ he writes. ‘Peter May holes out to a long-hop and lets me in three balls before lunch. I just survive, 0 not out. Have a healthy lunch but not so many mangoes as Bill Edrich. After lunch, in good form until Peter declares with me on 65.’ In fact it was 66, but who’s quibbling about one run?
Unless of course you are on 99. This happened to Reg Simpson later on in the tour, as Colin recounts. It was in one of the state games and just as Simpson was about to complete his century, Hutton took them off because it was drizzling with rain. On the resumption of play, Simpson was immediately out without adding to his total. ‘Furious row in the dressing room,’ Colin records, and leaves it at that.
They packed their bags and set sail again that evening. Colin was happy that he had got a few runs under his belt. It may have been a bit of a ‘picnic’ match but at least he had shown one or two of his fellow tourists who had never seen him play that he could bat. The significance of the innings was lost on him at the time but later he was to discover the poignancy of its association, one that he would never forget.
His own words describe it best, ‘Back at home that evening, my father was sitting listening to the radio and on hearing the good news, hurried upstairs to fetch a pencil and paper to make a note of the scores. He came down again but a few minutes later when my uncle sitting opposite looked up from his paper, he saw my father had died in his chair.’
Ernest Cowdrey, who had suffered from a bad heart for many years, was 54. Colin too died from a heart attack aged only 67.
The news of course did not reach him immediately. It was not until the SS Orsova docked at Fremantle that he finally learned what had happened. It cannot have escaped his mind that there was a sad irony in all this. The last time he was on the high seas, his father had dragged him from his cabin to watch a passing ship carrying Don Bradman and the 1938 Australian team on their way to England. As his father was drawing his last breath, Colin was on a ship going the other way, with the MCC team to tour Australia.
Blissfully ignorant for the time being of the tragic event back home, Colin continued to enjoy life on board. On one occasion, he was invited by the team manager, Geoffrey Howard, to be his guest at the staff commander’s cocktail party. ‘I then meet a chap on deck,’ Colin records, ‘who invites me to drinks that same evening. I apologise and say I cannot come because I’m having drinks with the staff commander. “That’s me, old chap!”’
As they steadily approached Fremantle, as if to call a halt to all the entertaining, socialising and deck games, Hutton summoned a team meeting, to remind them of what was ahead. His message was uncompromising. Colin’s words, ‘Len – “Graft away. Stay there long enough and the runs will come.”’ Thus spake a true Yorkshireman. But there was one final party, thrown by the captain – of the ship, not MCC. ‘He gave a speech to the England team and remembered the last time he had sailed with English cricketers. Except on this occasion, they were women.’
The speech obviously made a big impression on our tourist because he recounts it in detail. There was prize giving. To his dismay, the captain could see they were one prize short so he whispered to his purser to nip along to his cabin and select any item as a notional prize and bring it back. The purser duly hurried off and returned, breathless, to hand the captain a tankard, just in time.
‘The recipient was a rather Amazonian figure. He shook her hand and presented the tankard, with which he got a tremendous crack across the head. On the tankard was inscribed, Best Behaved Bitch at the Show. Len responded brilliantly.’
News of his father’s death filtered through gradually on the ship’s cable. First of all, his mother sent word that he was ill. ‘Ominous,’ he writes, ‘because Mother would not have wired had he been ordinarily ill.’ Soon, his worst fears were realised. We can only guess at his feelings because he remained tight-lipped, as he had learnt to do throughout his childhood. He says only this, ‘The thrill of embarking on Australian soil was sobered by the tragic news of Daddy’s passing. We have a meal with all the team together.’
On the face of it, that is an extraordinary non sequitur. The two pieces of news, his father’s death and a team meal, are separated only by a full stop. Not even a new paragraph. What do we make of that? Perhaps not as much as our cod psychoanalysis would have us believe. He was born into an age when things like that were not readily and openly discussed. Yet the death of one’s father is always a difficult thing, whatever the circumstances.
It is tricky at this distance to gauge the true nature of their relationship. Colin was ever the dutiful son, respectful of his father’s influence on his cricket career and grateful to him for smoothing his path for future success at every turn, even if he had been, as fate would have it, a distant figure. For the time being, stuck at the other end of the world, there was the dilemma of what to do next; should he return home or remain with the party?
Obviously upset and with conflicting emotions swirling around his head, he sought advice from his shipmate and future ally and best friend in cricket, Peter May. What was to be gained by going home, May told him. He would be too late for the funeral and, in any case, his father would surely have wished for him to stay. After all, that was his lifetime’s ambition, to see his son play for England; to abandon the tour now would have been the last thing that Ernest would have wanted. So the decision was made. Colin would stay and no doubt the MCC captain and management heaved a deep sigh of relief.
That is not to say that his team-mates were in any way unsympathetic to his plight. In fact, Colin remained forever hugely grateful to Len Hutton and the calm and kindly influence that he exerted on his young protege during these difficult weeks. Hutton had assured Ernest Cowdrey on the dockside at Tilbury that he would look after his son and that he did, without fuss, as was his way, but genuinely enough. And what better way was there to take his mind off his loss than to make sure he was fully occupied in doing what they had set out on this journey for – to play cricket?
For all that, there was no evidence that Hutton had it in mind that the 21-year-old uncapped undergraduate from Oxford would be an integral part of his master plan to take on the Aussies. In fact, Colin’s surprise selection had prompted Hutton to add an 18th member, Vic Wilson, to a touring party that customarily only numbered 17. Wilson was another batsman so Colin had no reason to believe anything other than that he would be well down the pecking order for a place in the Test side. All that was to change during the warm-up games against the state sides. First up were Western Australia and to his surprise, he found himself in the XI.
‘It was a great experience for me to bat with Len Hutton,’ is his breathless comment. ‘We put on 127 together, batting for two and a half hours. He retires with a strained groin after running a shortish single.’ I didn’t know Colin was in the habit of scampering singles but we mustn’t forget he was still a young man. And when your captain calls, you go. ‘We nearly collided in the middle of the wicket. He gets his 100 just on lunch and it’s a nightmare in case I run him out.’ He did not and did his cause for further selection no harm either.
That cause was strengthened against a strong New South Wales team, captained by Keith Miller and including Alan Davidson, Arthur Morris, Jim Burke, Richie Benaud and Bobby Simpson. According to Woodcock, in this game, ‘Cowdrey touched the heights with a century in each innings, batting at number six in the first and opening for the first time in his life in the second.’ The innings caught the eyes of his team-mates too. This is how Frank Tyson, in his diary of the tour, described it, ‘It was an outstanding knock. He is a natural timer of the ball and seems barely to touch the ball for it to speed to the boundary.’ His second innings was every bit as good. Tyson again, ‘A month short of his 22nd birthday, the baby of our side, Colin Cowdrey today scored his second hundred of the NSW game, against an attack that was the equal of anything Australia can throw at him. It was a superb response to the team’s needs and a wonderful display of temperament, well in advance of his tender years.’
Note that Tyson was more impressed by his mettle than his skill. Colin’s observation was merely this, ‘It was a softish wicket, helpful to the bowlers. Have to buy the boys some hock in the evening.’
It must have become increasingly obvious to Colin during the course of the match that far from being well down the pecking order he had climbed up, one might say, to the very top. The top of the order. The request from his captain to open the innings, which he agreed to without demur, for a request from Hutton was not one that ordinarily was refused, surprised him, and concerned him.
He had never fancied the role; it is, after all, a specialised position. He had never considered himself an opener and he never would, despite the number of times he was asked to do it. He always agreed, against his natural inclinations and better judgement, because the team came first, but he never liked it. On this occasion and for the rest of this tour, he was spared the predicament because Reg Simpson rediscovered his form and he opened in the first Test match with Hutton. But the opening bugbear was to raise its head from time to time throughout Colin’s career.
The burgeoning relationship between Colin and Len Hutton is an interesting one and sheds surprising light upon both of them, particularly the elder man. ‘Len thought the world of Colin,’ John Woodcock told me. ‘He wasn’t a fan originally, unsure about the maturity and resilience of one so young, no matter how impeccable his technique. But Colin won him over.’
No doubt it was that maiden Test hundred at Melbourne that convinced him? Not so, averred the distinguished journalist. He believed it was during their first innings partnership of 163 in that match against New South Wales that his mind was made up. ‘Len took him under his wing,’ he said, ‘and thereafter, they became firm friends.’
Quite clearly, something about Colin’s batting that day took root in the Yorkshireman’s mind and convinced him that here, despite his youth, privileged upbringing and fine manners, was a cricketer tougher than he looked. Tough enough to take on the Aussies in their back yard? Time would tell but Hutton’s envisaged Test team was slowly undergoing some modification. Not that he would have let on. ‘Len was a bit funny like that,’ Tom Graveney told me. ‘Nobody was quite sure what was going on in his mind. I got on all right with him but one or two of the others found him a bit stiff and uncommunicative.’
John Woodcock agreed. ‘An essentially private person, Hutton gave few clues to his thinking,’ he wrote. ‘He was introspective yet endearing, single-minded yet unassertive.’ Even Frank Tyson, who flogged himself into the hard-baked Australian ground for his captain, in much the same way that Larwood had done for Jardine 20 years earlier, recognised that Hutton ‘was not everybody’s cup of tea’. According to his account, Hutton forfeited the sympathy and respect of some of the senior members of the team for one or two quite separate reasons, but there was no denying his tactical acumen and single-minded determination to get one over the old enemy.
Having suffered enough at the hands of Lindwall and Miller, he resolved that the only way to beat them was to fight fire with fire. In this regard, he was lucky enough, some might say far-sighted enough, to have two outstanding fast bowlers at his disposal and in the prime of life and the form of their careers, Tyson and Statham. ‘No, four!’ Woodcock insisted. ‘Peter Loader didn’t play in the Tests but he was a mighty fine bowler and cut a swathe through the state sides. And don’t forget, we had left Fred Trueman at home.’
It is a truism that bowlers win matches but as Geoffrey Boycott never tires of pointing out, aye, but it’s the batsmen’s job to put enough runs on the board for the bowlers to get to work. In this respect, Hutton would have been the first to admit that without the contributions of two young men, May and Cowdrey, who were to provide the backbone of England’s batting for the next decade, the Ashes would never have been won. May was his vice-captain and already an experienced Test player. Colin was the surprise package. No longer was he M.C. Cowdrey, Tonbridge and Oxford, but Cowdrey of Kent and England, and Hutton’s acceptance of him as a bona fide member of the England team was important for both of them.
Dare one advance the theory that Hutton had become something of a father figure for the young man? Colin had to rely on figures in authority to fulfil that role throughout his early life, predominant among them Charles Walford, James McNeill and Rev. Lawrence Waddy, all men of culture, intelligence and standing. Is it too fanciful to imagine that Len Hutton had the same sort of influence? Certainly Colin’s admiration for the man was unstinting. He wrote these words about his captain on his return from Australia, ‘I remember his kindness to me upon hearing of the death of my father and his impeccable behaviour that Monday morning in Melbourne after the watering of the wicket. To me, his was a great achievement.’
The watering of the pitch we shall come to shortly but it was Hutton’s sportsmanlike response to it – not something normally associated with the obdurate northerner – which impressed Colin. Cricket was a tough business but it was not warfare. And his respect for Hutton as a cricketer knew no bounds, ‘His technical ability, his immense concentration, his fine cricket brain assure his place among the masters as long as the game is played.’
There was another, surprising element to their relationship – a shared sense of humour. The image of Hutton as an austere, saturnine northerner is incorrect. He was not the team joker, like Godfrey Evans or the life and soul of the party, like Bill Edrich but as Frank Tyson observed, he had a ‘dry, enigmatic wit’ and John Woodcock wrote, ‘The Hutton twinkle was easily lit.’
Colin told two good stories about him on this trip. During the course of their partnership against NSW, Colin noticed that his partner, hitherto untroubled by the bowling, suddenly seemed to struggle. It was a turning wicket but Hutton was used to batting on them and had been dealing with the turning ball with his usual skill and elan. Between overs, the truth was revealed.
Alan Davidson, the peerless left-arm seamer, was experimenting with a brand of orthodox spin and Hutton rather fancied him in this new mode. ‘Much easier than his usual stuff,’ he told the junior player. ‘Let’s see if we can keep ‘im on.’ And that is what he proceeded to do. ‘Hutton’s imitation of a great batsman in trouble was a classic...worthy of an Oscar,’ wrote Colin. Anybody who has tried to bat badly and get out not too obviously in a benefit, exhibition, Fathers v Sons or any non-serious match will know exactly what he meant.
Later, as Colin recalls in his diary, he went up to Hutton and remarked, ‘Hard work, skipper.’ The reply was pure Hutton. ‘Aye, it is when you’re not paid for it!’ The reference to his amateur status would not have been lost on the junior partner.
Colin was slowly relaxing and able to let his sense of fun bubble to the surface. At the conclusion of the match, with NSW left just 75 minutes to score an improbable 198, a challenge they declined, Colin entertained everybody during the closing overs with some expert impressions of the bowling actions of their adversaries – Miller, Lindwall, Benaud et al. ‘Kipper was an accomplished mimic,’ stated Tyson.
Note the use of the nickname ‘Kipper’. This is the first time in my study of Colin’s life that I have encountered it. It was the name that was to stick with him, used by friends and opponents alike throughout his career and beyond. It is sometimes – erroneously – ascribed to his flat feet; in fact it derived solely from his propensity to take a nap in the dressing room, not an uncommon habit among cricketers.
The ‘baby’ of the touring party had been given a nickname; he was now one of the lads. This talent to entertain was not reserved exclusively for his batting. One is put in mind of his habit of pouching a catch in the slips, quickly pocketing the ball and turning to point to third man.
It amazed me how often the crowd were fooled. But they loved it. In the same way, ill-advisedly on this occasion as it turned out, he pretended not to see one of Andy Roberts’s bouncers. The urge to have a bit of fun was never far away from a man who had an almost boyish enthusiasm for the game.
Fun was to be had a-plenty during down time on tour. There was a great deal of golf, tennis, real tennis, squash and swimming. There was also a fair smattering of social engagements, some of which were official but others that were informal and enjoyable, to say nothing of visits to the cinema and theatre. It really was a different world then, a complete contrast to present-day tours where one senses that the players rarely venture forth from their hotels, unless it is to go to the ground, and as for getting out of their tracksuits and donning a dinner jacket.
Here are a couple of examples of Colin’s convivial invitations, ‘Had dinner with Oxford Rhodes Scholars at Public Schools and make a speech.’ And how about this for a spot of name-dropping? ‘Lord Mayor’s Dinner. On my table Don Bradman, Bill Woodfull, Geoffrey Howard and the Archbishop of Melbourne.’ Clearly, he was making a name for himself Down Under. But with fame goes press intrusion, something he was never able to reconcile in his life. In Brisbane, he read with horror a newspaper headline, ‘Colin’s in love but nobody knows the score!’
Fun was brutally curtailed at the Gabba in Brisbane, the venue of his Test debut. A more inauspicious match for the tourists is hard to imagine. Pretty well everything that could go wrong did go wrong. First, Hutton completely misjudged the pitch, put the Australians in and paid the price. True to his conviction that pace would hold the key, he went in with four seamers, Tyson, Statham, Bedser and Bailey, and no spinner!
E.W. Swanton, before even a ball had been bowled, made the acerbic observation that, at that time, England had played 314 Test matches, and in 313 of them there had always been at least one spinner in the team. Truly, it was a gamble, and as soon as Australia started to bat Hutton saw that the pitch was a beauty, ‘full of runs’, said Colin, and knew his gamble had misfired.
‘Just a minute!’ my Times correspondent interjected here. ‘Not that much of a gamble. In the previous match against Queensland, Hutton had taken note of the fact that of all the wickets to fall, not one had been taken by a spinner. So leaving out Appleyard and Wardle and playing four seamers seemed a reasonable decision under the circumstances.’
Reading a pitch is never a precise science and can make fools of us all. Furthermore, Godfrey Evans had fallen ill on the morning of the match and had to be replaced by the untested Keith Andrew.
Once he won the toss, Hutton obviously thought ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’, and, hoping that if there was something, anything in this pitch it would likely show itself in the first hour, he elected to bowl. Thus, he condemned his team to two days in the field in searing heat as the Australians piled on the runs.
To add injury to insult, Denis Compton broke his hand in the first hour, catching it on the white picket fence of the boundary as he went to field the ball. England were immediately one batsman short. To compound their woes, they fielded like drains. A conservative estimate among onlookers was that in total a dozen catches were dropped. If Hutton believed he had a plan to take on the Aussies, it lay, smudged and torn, beneath the rubble at the Gabba. ‘We were hammered,’ is Colin’s terse description.
Australia amassed 601/8 declared and all of the England seamers came away with the dreaded hundred to their name; Bedser 1-131, Statham 2-123, Tyson 1-160, Bailey 3-140. The jitters in the field afflicted everyone, even the safest of catchers. Colin was not faultless either; he dropped three, of varying difficulty. When he finally caught one at second slip, Arthur Morris off Bailey for 153, he had his stomach to thank more than his hands. Hutton, beside him at first slip, looked at him and sardonically enquired, ‘Do you catch ’em all like that?’
Hutton’s dark mood was perhaps understandable. It was all his fault, he believed, and now his best-laid plans had turned to dust. ‘Hutton was unapproachable,’ Colin wrote. ‘He communicated with no one.’
As England set out on the almost impossible task of trying to save the match, he became even more depressed as his side were bowled out for 190 and forced to follow on. This was Colin’s lament about his first Test innings, ‘Trevor and I stay until I am given out caught off my boot at twenty nine and a half minutes past five.’ He had scored 40. Swanton reported, ‘Cowdrey’s innings was the one bright gleam of light in a dreary day for England.’
The batsmen made a better fist of it in the second innings but the result was never in doubt. They were eventually dismissed for 257, thus suffering a catastrophic defeat by an innings and 154 runs.
The England skipper was a tortured man. The pain etched on his face was plain for all to see. ‘Depression in the camp,’ reports Colin. ‘Len presents me with a stump as a memory of the match. I tell him that it will only bring back the unhappiest memories of five galling days in my first Test match.’
But as is the way with young men, the disappointment swiftly subsided, champagne was drunk that night and everybody went about telling each other that the next Test would be different. ‘The experience,’ wrote Tyson in his diary, ‘shows me quite clearly that when we take our catches – and when we have just a modicum of luck – we can beat this Aussie side.’
Even Hutton’s mood lightened, reassuring his team that the Ashes were not yet lost. His sense of humour was restored too. Colin tells of an amusing incident in the hotel foyer a day or two afterwards. E.W. Swanton was present. ‘Hey, Skipper,’ cried out one wag from the assembled group, ‘have you read what the Telegraph said about you?’ ‘No,’ was Hutton’s disingenuous reply. Whereupon, he strode across the marble floor, removed the folded Telegraph from that paper’s correspondent’s arm, spread it out and sat down to read. Taking his time, as he always did, Hutton eventually stood up, refolded the paper and replaced it in Swanton’s grasp. ‘I have now,’ he announced, deadpan.
The Englishmen approached the second Test in Sydney by no means downcast but aware that this would be the vital match of the series. As Swanton had reported in that article in the Telegraph, ‘In brutal truth, the game had been bungled by England from start to finish.’ They were determined not to do so again.
Controversy raised its head again before a ball had been bowled. Alec Bedser, a stalwart of the side since the war, was dropped. This in itself, though sad, was by no means indefensible. Bedser by now was 36, he had been suffering from shingles and he had not been at his best. Perhaps his friend and greatest champion, Len Hutton, sensed that this was the end of the road for the lion-hearted seam bowler and made the decision in the team’s best interests, putting his faith in speed and youth, namely Tyson and Statham. And subsequent events bore him out.
But he never told Bedser! The first Bedser knew that he was not playing was when the team-sheet was pinned to the dressing room board 15 minutes before the start of play. He was upset and felt aggrieved, understandably so. Colin tried to make sense of what had happened, the decision and the manner of its implementation. ‘It was an understandable but tragic omission,’ he wrote.
The truth was that Bedser had not been bowling well but the handling of his omission was insensitive, he believed, something he resolved never to do whenever, if ever, he captained his country. The trouble was, and this afflicts all captains who are opening batsmen, there is precious little time to compose yourself for batting after the toss has taken place and your team is taking first knock. For Hutton, concentration was all.
‘On his batting days,’ Colin observed, ‘Hutton retired into a world of his own. He neither spoke to anyone nor appeared to hear if anyone spoke to him.’ Bedser was the victim of this cocoon of self-absorption. He was deeply hurt, no doubt reflecting that this was probably the end of his Test career. The whole thing, Colin felt, could have been done more sympathetically.
One of the unassailable requisites of a great match, I have always believed, is that the result should be in doubt until the very end. Great deeds can be performed, great skill and bravery may be present in abundance, but there has to be an element of nail-biting tension for it to go down in the annals as a magnificent contest. The Sydney Test had it all.
Once again, England were disappointing in the first innings, bowled out for 154. ‘We get an awful slating from the press,’ Colin informs us. That boozy party with the press on board SS Orsova must have seemed a long time ago. But Australia were able to take only modest advantage in replying with 228. Tyson and Bailey were the two main destroyers, taking four wickets apiece. Frank Tyson was particularly hostile and it was here, in this innings, that he seemed to assert a dominance over the Australian batsmen that he did not relinquish for the rest of the series.
Up until now he had been fast, very fast, but a bit woolly and erratic in his control. The change had been his run-up. ‘Frank had a long run, about 38 paces,’ Tom Graveney said. ‘It seemed too long, especially in the heat. And, don’t forget, we had eight-ball overs in Australia then.’ According to Colin, it was taking him about 11 minutes to bowl an over.
Alf Gover, the former England fast bowler and noted coach, was covering the tour for one of the English newspapers, and he was aware that Tyson, in the nets, particularly in his famous indoor school in Wandsworth, south-west London, employed a much shorter run, without a discernible lessening of pace. He advised his protege to use that shortened run, to conserve energy and at the same time maintaining forward momentum. The result was electrifying.
‘Tyson’s bowling was sheer blind speed,’ said an admiring Colin, no doubt thankful, as you always are, that the nasty fast bowler was on his side. The Australian batsmen’s discomfort was plain to see. No doubt Hutton was jubilant. He had gambled on Tyson and it was working. And he had gambled on leaving out Bedser and that was working too. Furthermore, he would not have been human if he had not felt a touch of schadenfreude: after all, he had been suffering at the hands of Lindwall and Miller for long enough. By the way, our young tourist had been suffering in the heat. ‘Feel a bit crook,’ he says, deliciously unconscious of plagiarising the Australian language.
In their second innings, England were swiftly reduced to 55/3, still 74 in arrears, and it seemed that they had thrown away any advantage that Tyson and Bailey had wrested back, and with it probably the Ashes. I shall leave it to the Telegraph’s correspondent to describe what happened next, ‘Thus arrived the youthful Cowdrey once again to plug a hole, this time a yawning hole.’
Colin joined Peter May and both knew that the series would be over if either had got out; the stakes were that high. ‘If the grace belonged to May, Cowdrey supplied an equal calm certainty of judgement and common sense,’ continued our scribe. Together, they put on 116 priceless runs in what was turning out to be a low-scoring game.
Swanton was not the only one to wax lyrical about their batting. Back in the dressing room, Tyson spoke for them all, though more articulately than most. ‘What marvellous young batsmen are these two from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. As one watched their afternoon dominance of the Aussie bowlers, one sensed that here before our very own eyes, we were watching the arrival of a fresh young generation of future England batsmen.’
May’s was a peerless innings, John Woodcock told me, ‘particularly savage on anything short, which was immediately despatched to the midwicket boundary’. Tyson again, ‘Kipper’s brooding concentration sat heavily on his shoulders but did not inhibit his natural penchant for playing strokes. He hid his intensity behind a bland impassive expression.’
Eventually, that concentration was snapped, Benaud luring him into a mistimed lofted off-drive and he departed for 54. Tyson gives a moving account of the scene when Colin returned to the dressing room. ‘Colin came back utterly despondent and immediately burst into floods of tears. “I’ve just thrown away the Test match, Frank.” I replied, “Not if I can help it.” He and I have the same depth of feeling about certain issues.’ If Tyson wore his heart on his sleeve, the buttoned-down Cowdrey certainly did not. He merely reports in his diary thus, ‘I hole out off a massive shot and am in tears.’ No mention of the fact that he had scored a crucial half-century.
Depth of feeling can be expressed in different ways. Colin was always of the undemonstrative breed. To him actions spoke louder than words. Tyson was a fast bowler and by nature they are more bellicose. They have to be. It takes it out of you, fast bowling, and though the spirit is always willing, the flesh tires and sometimes flags. Every so often, something other than pure cricketing motivation is required to stir the blood.
On this occasion, Tyson got cross and the Australian batsmen took the brunt. The following day, Peter May completed a memorable hundred but the England lead of 223 was precarious. Most of the sensible money was on an Australian victory. In the previous Test, Ray Lindwall had batted very well, scoring 64, adding weight to the view that he was a genuine all-rounder. In fact, Australia were blessed with four of these multi-talented cricketers – Benaud, Archer, Miller and Lindwall, with Alan Davidson waiting in the wings.
In view of Lindwall’s status as a batsman, the runs he had scored and the understandable frustration of the England bowlers at Brisbane, Tyson now decided to put aside the age-old custom of a fast bowler not giving a bouncer to another of the brotherhood, and let him have one. The look that Lindwall gave his tormentor did not bode well for the Englishman’s well-being when it came to have his turn to bat. Lindwall had his opportunity now. He repaid the compliment. Tyson lost sight of the ball, turned away and was hit a sickening blow on the back of the head.
For a while, he was unconscious, as concerned players gathered around. ‘My God, Lindy,’ his batting partner, Bill Edrich cried, ‘you’ve killed him!’ Lindwall hadn’t but still, Tyson was carted off to hospital for X-rays. Fortunately, the skull remained intact and he was left with nothing more than a sore head. Oh, and a burning sense of resentment. ‘I was very, very angry with Ray Lindwall,’ he later said, ‘and the whole of the Aussie team knew it.’
I guess the situation was not a lot different to The Oval in 1994, when England were playing South Africa. Devon Malcolm, the England fast bowler and tail-ender, was hit on the head in similar fashion. Incensed, he turned to the South African fielders and uttered the famous remark, ‘You guys are history!’ He then took 9-58.
Tyson didn’t put it quite like that but the fury that was aroused in him was similar, with the same result. He took 6-85 and his ten wickets in the match ‘were the reward for as fine a display of sustained speed and stamina I have ever seen in a fast bowler’, wrote Swanton.
‘I was fielding at first slip,’ Graveney described to me. ‘There was a gale blowing down the ground and I was standing 40 yards back. And still the snicks were flying over my head. It was frightening.’ Trevor Bailey believed that he had not seen anybody, or thought it was possible for anyone, to bowl as fast as Tyson that day. Don Bradman always maintained that Tyson, on this tour, was the fastest he had ever seen. And he had faced Harold Larwood in the Bodyline series. Australia were blown away for 184 and England had secured a famous and vital victory.
Despite Tyson’s heroics, they almost didn’t get there. While wickets were tumbling at the other end, Neil Harvey was playing serenely, as if engaged in a completely different contest. At 145/9, he was joined by the last man, Bill Johnston. Harvey expertly manoeuvred the strike, Johnston swung away merrily, Tyson was tiring and the score mounted. Suddenly, an unlikely Australian victory seemed possible before Tyson summoned up one last burst of energy to have Johnston caught behind by the acrobatic Godfrey Evans for England to scrape home by 38 runs. Harvey was left stranded on 92 not out and ‘his innings was the best I have ever seen him play’, said an admiring Cowdrey later.
‘And don’t forget George!’ said Tom Graveney, much later. George? Who was George? ‘George was our nickname for Brian Statham.’ Colin agreed with Graveney’s assessment. ‘Typhoon bowls magnificently with Brian Statham giving splendid support, with great accuracy and heart.’ That was true. He bowled 19 overs (of eight balls) for 45 and took three wickets. He gave Hutton control at one end while Tyson wreaked havoc at the other.
By general consent, Hutton’s tactics throughout had been faultless. In his writing, Colin gives an insight into a great captain on top of his game. His placement of the field, his changing of the bowling, his knowledge of the opposition and their strengths and weaknesses, were outstanding. And he was a master of psychological pressure. Colin gave an example. Whenever Benaud came to the wicket, Hutton would stop whoever was bowling the next over just before he had started his run. ‘Hold on a second,’ he would say, raising up his hand at slip, and then walking slowly up to the middle, ‘Where’s Frank?’ while looking all around the ground, unable to locate his fast bowler.
Of course he knew exactly where Tyson was but Benaud had shown fallibility against him in the past and this was Hutton’s way of ratcheting up the pressure a notch or two. Jardine had done the same with Bradman during the Bodyline series, affecting to scan the horizon unsuccessfully for Larwood. Another ploy was to wait until Tyson was about to bowl. Hutton knew his man was tired, blowing a bit. Once again, he would hold up his hand, march slowly all the way from first slip to where Tyson was waiting at the end of his run, and ask, ‘Are you all right, Frank?’ ‘Fine, Skip,’ Tyson assured him. Hutton would then walk slowly back to his place. Tyson had had his little rest.
Christmas in a hot country just doesn’t feel right. There is something incongruous, phoney even, about fairy lights, sleds on cotton wool and Father Christmas sweating heavily in the heat, ringing a bell outside supermarkets and department stores as shoppers pass by in shorts and flip-flops. And turkey with all the trimmings in the evening, when the heat of the day has barely diminished, is an uncomfortable experience.
For all that, the MCC team did their best to try and replicate the traditional cheer of the occasion in their hotel, always difficult when separated from family and friends. But they were in good spirits, having a victory to celebrate, secure in the knowledge that they were back in the series and, who knows, in with a very good chance of winning it. While most of the players took the opportunity of a bit of a lie-in on Christmas Day, Frank Tyson noted one early riser.
‘Kipper was off to church early.’ In his diary, Colin makes other comments about the church services he attended, usually with a brief appraisal of the sermon. ‘What a fine individual he is! A true Christian who practises and preaches,’ Tyson concluded. One can only assume that the practice he refers to has more to do with doctrine than nets, because there was no Test on Boxing Day, as is now the custom in Australia. Colin adds a tart little comment about Boxing Day in Melbourne, ‘Shambles! We are turfed out of our hotel. Team split up to alternative accommodation.’ Notwithstanding, they all had a few welcome days off and most of them, including Colin, opted to watch the Davis Cup Final between Australia and the USA in Sydney.
It did not appear to Colin and others that Hutton had been able to relax in the short holiday break over Christmas. ‘Meet Len at the tennis,’ says Colin, ‘who is bored stiff and hopes the Aussies lose!’ They did. But it was the fate of the Ashes, not the Davis Cup, which occupied Hutton’s every waking moment. It would define his legacy as an England captain.
In fact, he was teetering on the brink of what can only be described as a nervous breakdown. He looked wretched, his fibrositis had flared up again, he wasn’t sleeping and the pressure was clearly getting to him. Privately, Colin wondered what it was that had triggered this state of affairs. It wasn’t that Hutton lacked courage or mental resilience. He had been carrying the England batting, almost single-handedly at times, for years. What’s more, he was an opening batsman and been taking the brunt of the new ball since before the war.
So why did he hide in his room on the morning of the Melbourne Test, unwilling to emerge and claiming he could not play? Could not play? The very idea was unthinkable. England had got the Aussies on the ropes, they had every intention of delivering a knockout blow, and they needed their leader. Perhaps, mused Colin, the explanation for Hutton’s cold sweat – he could not call it stage fright, for Hutton was used to the grand stage, even one as big as the impressive MCG – was the burden of captaincy, not the fear of failure. Hutton had never captained before his elevation to the England job, not even with his native Yorkshire. He was then 36. Inexperienced then. Not as a player, of course – he had played 56 Tests before being appointed – but as a leader. If he had been made a captain much earlier in his career, which of course was impossible in those days, on account of his being a professional, he might have been better able to cope, Colin believed. However, he kept these thoughts to himself; though established in the team, he was still the baby of the party.
Fortunately, older heads than his were thinking along the same lines. A group of senior players and management went to Hutton’s room and managed to persuade him to play even if he was feeling below par. He donned his blazer, went out to toss, won it and chose to bat. After Brisbane, he could hardly have done anything else. Soon, he probably wished he had stayed in bed. Edrich and May fell almost before Colin had buckled on his pads. Out he wandered, yet again in the middle of a crisis. If Swanton referred to the state of the England batting at Sydney as a ‘yawning hole’, then this moment of truth was more like a gaping chasm.
In Jack Bannister’s excellent book, The Innings Of My Life, Colin describes how he felt and what he was up against, ‘All I could do was to fight for my life but things seemed to get even tougher when I watched Keith Miller bowl to Len two of the greatest maiden overs I ever saw. It was a privilege to be at the non-striker’s end and watch two great cricketers in opposition. Keith bowled out of his skin but Len somehow coped...And there was me, an undergraduate, wondering what on earth I was doing there.’
Perhaps it is easy to forget, those of us having been brought up in later eras of wonderful all-rounders – Sobers, Procter, Imran, Botham, Hadlee, Kapil Dev – just what a magnificent cricketer Keith Miller was. Here he was, ripping the England batting to shreds and a quick look at the Australian batting order will tell you that he was scheduled to bat at three. It was not long before he snared his prey, Hutton caught in the slips for 12. He set his sights next on his old friend, Denis Compton.
Colin continues, ‘Miller roared in and the first ball nipped back and hit Denis. “Morning, Mr Compton,” from Keith, who then ran in and bowled the equivalent of a lightning leg break which lifted as well. Not too surprisingly, Denis never got within several inches of what was a brute of a delivery.’
Two of the most recognisable and charismatic cricketers of their era were going at it, hammer and tongs. This was the opening session of a pivotal Test match, with the series and Ashes in the balance. But there were no histrionics, no snarling, no pointing, no swearing, no abuse. It was a Test match, played in front of a packed, raucous New Year crowd at the MCG but tempers did not flare and nobody squared up to anybody.
This was cricket as it should be played and Colin never wavered from his belief that, at the end of the day, both literally and metaphorically, it was a game, not war. His career straddled several generations and the later practice of sledging and aggressive behaviour never sat comfortably with him.
For the time being, he concentrated on survival. Miller had his tail up and like all fast bowlers with the scent of blood in his nostrils, he went in for the kill.
‘I swallowed hard and watched and listened. Nothing was said but as Keith came back past me, he winked and smiled and said, “I don’t know, Col – I’ve played against Compo since 1946 and he still doesn’t get any better!”’
Eventually, Miller had his man. Compton was caught by Harvey and England were in the perilous position of 41/4, with Cowdrey as the last top-order batsman left. It wasn’t even lunch. Not that Hutton would have fancied eating anything. He could see the game, and the Ashes, slipping away through his fingers before it had barely started. Few sides come back to win a series having gone 2-1 down. At the break, Miller went in with the extraordinary figures of nine overs, eight maidens, five runs, three wickets. And don’t forget, they were eight-ball overs. He had bowled unchanged throughout the session, a spell that Colin described as ‘as near unplayable as I have ever seen’. The five runs he conceded all morning were three from Compton past cover and two off the back foot from Cowdrey, also past cover.
Lunch provided some respite and a chance to take stock. On the resumption, Colin played what John Woodcock always believed was ‘the first, and to mind, the finest of his 21 Test hundreds... His 102 out of a total of 191 was the pivotal innings of the whole tour.’ It was this display of fearless batsmanship that earned Hutton’s undying respect and admiration. Quite simply, without it, England were sunk.
As it was, they hung on for Tyson to wreak his havoc in the last innings. Together with Bailey, then Evans, Colin batted flawlessly, ‘getting his body behind short, rising balls, which Lindwall and Miller were able to bowl almost at will’, reported Wisden, ‘Cowdrey specialised in perfectly timed drives, both straight and to cover and he forced the ball skilfully off his legs.’ Ernest Cowdrey, watching the game from his armchair up above, would have purred with pleasure at his son’s off-side play but must have puckered his brow in surprise at his leg-side shots.
Like all batsmen in prime form, Colin was aware that he was in the groove. ‘The ball was never far from the middle of my bat...The moisture in the pitch started to dry and things seemed easier.’ For him, that might have appeared so. It certainly wasn’t the case for anyone else. For a while, he became becalmed on 64, the way it sometimes happens. He kept on losing the strike and balls to hit seemed to dry up. He got a fearful barracking from the crowd and it was here that he made his only error of judgement.
In an effort to throw off the shackles, he had a go at one and was narrowly missed being caught at mid-on. Fortunately, the ball went wide and, having berated himself, he resumed concentration and the strokes flowed once more. He effortlessly moved towards his hundred.
‘I hit Archer through the covers to go from 93 to 97 and I was so close....Sometimes players get stuck in that position through no fault of their own. The bowling stays tight, the fielding becomes keener, with the opposing captain understandably trying to play on nerves, but this time I had no problem. Archer dug one in short and I played the Peter May trademark shot – wide of mid-on. I knew I’d got a chance of three and so did the crowd. They had given me the treatment earlier when I got stuck in the 60s but now the cheering rose to a crescendo. It was generous and I found it touching, because they knew what it meant to me over and above the match situation (my father having died only a few weeks earlier).’
One could say that there and then was forged a lifetime’s love of Australia and its people.
He had every intention of carrying on in the same manner but a combination of Johnston and Johnson did for him. In some ways it was a bit of a freakish dismissal, a sure sign that the gremlins had not left this pitch and never would for the duration of the match. Johnson pitched one in the rough outside his leg stump, footmarks created by the left-handed Johnston when he had been bowling from that end. It turned quickly, evading his front pad and passed through his legs to bowl him. ‘It hit the edge of one of the cracks,’ observed Evans.
‘Colin was icily superb,’ wrote Tyson. ‘For four hours his concentration never wavered...Shooters became more frequent but Colin dug them out... He is a superb striker of the ball and is completely unflappable. He exudes a complete dedication to cricket and to his side.’
He was out for 102 and just one statistic, among so many, underlines how important an innings it was. He made his runs out of the lowest total (191) to contain a century, to share that record with Don Bradman, who scored 103 not out from a total of 191 in the 1932/33 Bodyline series.
Statistics rarely troubled the Cowdrey mind. What was more important was the quality of the innings. If we accept that all the ingredients of a great innings were here – top-class opposition, a tense match situation, a difficult pitch – then this one was truly great.
In his own words again, ‘What was so satisfying was that I did not give a chance and I hardly played a loose stroke....It was a day that had everything for me: Miller’s marvellous spell, the interplay between him and Compton, and then the two vital partnerships with Trevor and Godfrey. And all in my third Test in front of the biggest crowd I have ever seen.’
Cricket is a strange sport, a team game incorporating a composite of individual performances. Colin may well have gone to bed that night thrilled at his maiden Test hundred, but there was a match to be won and England were still in a perilous position. Thanks to his innings, it wasn’t a hopeless position but his team needed to bowl out Australia cheaply, or at least keep the lead down to manageable proportions. At the close of play on the second day, their score was 188/8.
The game was very much in the balance. The next day was a rest day and the temperature soared. 104 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in Melbourne and the England team, relaxing in the shade of the hotel, fully expected the fierce sun to widen those cracks in the pitch even more. ‘The heat was incredible,’ Woodcock said.1 ‘There was a hot wind blowing from the north, the interior.’ So hot, Colin tells us, ‘Bush fires were breaking out all over the place.’
It being a Sunday, Colin sought temporary shelter in the cool sanctuary of St Paul’s Cathedral before somehow persuading the prime minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, to perform a favour. Already, even at the age of 22, he was ‘persuading’ people, often influential people, to do him a good turn. The prime minister! Almost casually, Colin records the nature of the request, ‘Mr Menzies fixes a call through to my mother. The night is so hot, I didn’t sleep much.’
Once again, we may well be nonplussed by the non sequitur. For the moment, how else can we explain it other than he was young, he was not in the habit of talking through his emotions, he was in the middle of a Test match and he was drained after playing one of the great Ashes innings? And it was hot.
Hot and dry. There had been no relieving thunderstorm. The team’s surprise, therefore, soon turning to bewilderment, then to anger, knew no bounds as they arrived at the ground on the Monday morning to find the pitch wet and the cracks closed up. Foul play or a groundsman’s mistake? It depends whether you are inclined to conspiracy theories or more prepared to accept the official explanation. ‘I wouldn’t like to say!’ is Colin’s wink and a nudge.
Actually, there never was a satisfactory explanation given by the ground authorities and the England players sat and fumed. ‘It wasn’t malpractice,’ Woodcock insisted. ‘It was a genuine mistake. One of the groundstaff had panicked and thinking the pitch would not last – which it didn’t anyway – he had watered it in an attempt to bind up the cracks.’
It appeared that England would be put at a disadvantage by this strange turn of events. Australia, batting last on a pitch with cracks widening into fissures, would not have fancied their chances. It was at this point that Hutton revealed the full extent of his leadership qualities, thus underlining why his senior players were so anxious to rouse him from his sick bed on that first morning. Bitterness, recrimination and, most important of all, loss of focus could have affected his team and turned their attention away from what they were there for – to win the match.
‘Len said nothing,’ Colin wrote, ‘and to his eternal credit… appeared to be only interested in getting on with the game. I do not think he has ever been given full credit for his extraordinary restraint on this occasion.’ As it happened, Woodcock insisted, the watering of the pitch helped rather than hindered England but that takes nothing away from Hutton’s composure at a decisive moment.
Australia were dismissed with a lead of only 40. England saw off the arrears while the dampened pitch slumbered but it was not long before the cracks re-appeared and batting became hazardous again. This time it was the other young star in the firmament, Peter May, who saved his team. ‘Peter went on to make a brilliant 91,’ Colin wrote, and he was not the only one in the England dressing room to be very disappointed that May did not reach the hundred he richly deserved. For once it is not the purple prose of E.W. Swanton that illuminated these two innings by the young Englishmen during the match but Alan Ross of The Observer, ‘May split the air with the noise of his strokes, Cowdrey the field with the ease of his timing.’ Somehow, England scraped together 279. Australia needed 240 to win and it was anybody’s game.
Well, it could have been were it not for that man Tyson...again. Within five overs, the game was, to all intents and purposes, over. Harvey, Benaud and Miller were summarily despatched and the Australian innings was in ruins. They were bowled out for 111 before lunch. Tyson had taken 7-27 and England had their victory by 128 runs.
‘But I couldn’t have done it without George,’ Tyson announced in a generous and honest nod of appreciation to his fellow fast bowler, Brian Statham. As ever, Statham had toiled away at the other end, providing no respite for shell-shocked batsmen with his accuracy and pace. Colin observes, ‘Brian bowls like a dingbat!’
To be fair to the Australian batsmen, it has to be said that facing Tyson and Statham on a good wicket would have been no picnic; to combat them on a wicket that was always tricky and had now deteriorated sharply was beyond them. To put it into context, Cowdrey with his 102 and May with his 91, were the only batsmen from either side in both innings to score a fifty. England, having been 1-0 down, were now 2-1 up and ‘in tremendous spirit and form’, Colin tells us.
When I read Colin’s diary, I hoped to uncover morsels of information of life on the road for an MCC touring team. I did not expect this, ‘I hold Ned Kelly’s gun that was his when he was shot.’ Ned Kelly was an Australian bushranger and notorious outlaw, famous for his homemade metal suit of armour, eventually overcome after a killing spree and hanged for his crimes. The mental picture of Colin Cowdrey flourishing a pistol at an alarmed museum curator is difficult to put down. ‘Hasn’t this Pommie done us enough damage?’ one can imagine him thinking. Colin was back on more familiar territory in Adelaide. ‘Meet Hoad and Rosewall. Splendid evening with Don Bradman.’
Adelaide, the venue for the fourth Test, is known as the City of Churches. Colin therefore had a very wide choice, 529 to be precise, for a place of worship but opted to attend matins and read the sermon at St Peter’s Cathedral. ‘He is the most virtuous of the touring party,’ remarked Tyson, without a hint of irony or disdain. To seek the cool and cloistered atmosphere of a cathedral was probably a sensible call in view of the heatwave that had engulfed the city in mid-January.
There was no such respite on the first morning as the captains went out to toss in the match that would decide the destiny of the Ashes. As the holders, England had only to secure a draw to retain the urn but a draw was not on Hutton’s radar. He wanted to beat the old enemy in their back yard. Australia won the toss and with the temperature nudging into triple figures, unsurprisingly elected to bat.
It was a day of turgid cricket. Scores of 51/0 at lunch, 119/3 at tea and 161/4 at stumps hardly sound like riveting fare for the punters and from the perspective of modern-day crash, bang, wallop batting, even in Test matches, it seems like an unconscionably slow run rate. But one must take into account the low level of confidence and the caution of the Australian batsmen, especially after their drubbing at Melbourne, the slowness of the pitch and the excellence of the England bowlers, all of whom kept a tight grip on proceedings on an unhelpful surface. It may have been tedious but it was tense.
After the day’s play, Hutton came in for some pointed criticism for the slow over rate. Even John Woodcock agreed that it was ‘awful’. He went on to write, ‘It was, I am afraid, a deliberate ploy, aimed at upsetting the Australians.’ Colin was more forgiving; he ascribed it to the searing heat and the eight-ball overs. Both of them had a point but it was no defensive tactic from the England captain. Those spectators who believed that he was playing for a draw did not know their man.
Frank Tyson understood him better than most. ‘I sense that Len is still pursued by his own personal demons,’ he wrote on the eve of the game. ‘He will never be content until the series has been won and he has exorcised his two personal tormentors, Lindwall and Miller.’ The slow over rate was intended to strangle the Australians and nurse his bowlers in short spells through a day of the most intense heat. Whatever it takes was his motto.
Colin was less concerned about the over rate than the closeness to the bat at short-leg he was expected to stand when Appleyard was bowling. ‘Twas ever thus. That is where the young shavers of any team are put. Colin had not yet secured for himself a regular spot in the slips, which, once occupied, he never relinquished until he retired. His apprehension was not without foundation, as we shall see.
The following day, the Australians ground away without much purpose but the tail wagged and they felt reasonably content with their total of 323. For once, England did not get off to a disastrous start in their reply, posting the first 50 opening partnership of the series. On the morning of the third day, that bubble of security was punctured by the swift loss of two wickets and yet again it was Cowdrey who steadied the ship, together with his captain.
They had put on 99 runs before Hutton was deprived of his hundred – it would have been his first of the series – by a freak piece of bad luck. Johnston served up a juicy long-hop, Hutton latched on to it eagerly, only for his full-blooded pull shot to disappear into Davidson’s midriff at short leg. Somehow, the fielder clung on to the ball as he doubled up in pain. Partnered now by Denis Compton, Colin hung on.
It was hard going. If ever confirmation were required that a slow pitch produces slow scoring, then here was it, two of England’s finest stroke-makers reduced to passivity. In Colin’s words, ‘The wicket was slow, the Australians were bowling defensively and runs were hard to come by.’ The barracking got to him. ‘The 42,000 crowd gave me some stick.’
He flashed at a few balls, intent on breaking the deadlock. He was then surprised to see the arrival of England’s 12th man, Vic Wilson, resplendent in his tour blazer, making his way to the middle. Usually, the excuse is a change of batting gloves, always accompanied of course by a few words of advice from the dressing room. Wilson produced no gloves. Instead, he flourished two bananas. ‘Skipper thought you might be a bit hungry,’ he announced cryptically. That was typical Hutton. With an oblique reference to Colin’s already hearty appetite, he made his meaning clear. Now was not the time to get out. Colin took the hint and knuckled down.
His five-hour vigil came to an end having scored 79 painstaking runs, hardly the fluent batting of his century in the previous Test but crucial in terms of this England innings and the outcome of the match. In the side’s total of 341, only Hutton with 80 had outscored him. With little separating the two sides as Australia started their second innings, once again a game was in the balance. Oh no, it wasn’t. Tyson and Statham, aided and abetted on this occasion by Appleyard, bowled them out for 111. England needed only 94 to win, wrap up the series, retain the urn and attain immortality.
The scene in the dressing room was far from the confident, expectant headquarters of a general on the cusp of his most famous victory. It was as if Hutton could not quite believe it. Surely there would be a sting in the tail yet. There always was with the Australians, bitter experience had taught him. Colin, while fielding in the gully, had been struck a nasty blow on the nose. ‘I’m carried off,’ he informs us. ‘Go to Calvary Hospital for X-ray and find that the bridge of my nose is broken. It is swollen and painful.’
The following morning, ‘breakfast is sent up to me in bed and my face is still swollen and sore’. He did not expect to be batting but Hutton was a tough nut and when asked by Peter May, the vice-captain, with a sideways look at Colin’s two black eyes, who was going to bat in his place, he answered, ‘No one.’ Hutton’s foreboding and May’s forewarning were borne out by an extraordinary spell of bowling from Keith Miller – who else? – which, for a few wobbly moments, threatened catastrophe.
In 20 balls, Miller dismissed Edrich, Hutton and Cowdrey, the score was 18/3 and all was a-jitter back in the England dressing room. ‘Len was sitting down, not even unbuckling his pads,’ said Graveney. ‘He kept on saying, “The booger’s done for us!” Denis hadn’t even gone out. “Hang on,” he said, “I haven’t batted yet.” And he went out there and knocked off the runs. Only then was the tension released and a great cheer went up as he saw us home.’ Colin noted with grim satisfaction, ‘The Aussie crowd are streaming mournfully out of the ground before the closing scenes.’
England had won and the celebrations commenced. Colin noted that there were tears in Hutton’s eyes as he said, ‘I wish Lord Hawke was here now.’ His Lordship captained both Yorkshire (for 28 years) and England, was a noted administrator in the game and became the father figure of Yorkshire cricket. Despite being an amateur, he was a staunch supporter of the professionals. Hutton would have appreciated that.
It was rumoured the team got through 56 bottles of champagne that evening. Who paid? ‘I have got to pay the bill,’ notes Colin ruefully, ‘and it amounts to $60!’ Graveney told me that at one stage Bill Edrich, God knows how, shinned up one of the marble pillars of the hotel ballroom and gave a stentorian rendition of ‘Ginger’, holding on with one arm while the other was cradling one of those bottles. ‘Somebody asked him to extinguish his cigarette,’ said Tom. ‘He did so by jumping fully clothed into the swimming pool.’
Where was Colin while all this carousing was taking place? ‘Off to bed early because my nose is a bit rough.’ He was also sickening for something. Within days, it had developed into full-blown influenza. So ‘rough’ was he that a stay in hospital was ordered and there he remained for five days.
The final Test of the rubber at Sydney was a damp squib, in every sense. It rained. And rained. Play did not start until after lunch on the fourth day. For the umpteenth time on the tour, Hutton kept his plans close to his chest. Even when he went out to toss, nobody was entirely sure who was playing.
Colin had only just come out of hospital and certainly wasn’t expecting to have to get changed. Had the match started on time, somebody would have had to fetch him from his hospital but now, three days later, without practice or even a warm-up, he was informed by his captain that he most certainly was playing.
Bill Edrich was exhausted. After a long and illustrious career in the service of his country, he had finally shot his bolt. But who was going to open with Hutton? The captain returned from the toss, looked around the dressing room, his eyes lighted upon Tom Graveney and he said, ‘Pad up, Tom. You’re opening with me.’ Graveney was astonished. He was not an opener, had never done it and, frankly, it was not a job he relished. But like Colin earlier on in the tour, when asked to fulfil a similar role, he didn’t argue and walked out of the green-roofed and ornately designed pavilion at the SCG with Hutton to open the innings. He scored 111, his first (and only) hundred against the Australians.
Everybody contributed to a score of 371/7 declared, with the exception of Hutton himself, snared by his old nemesis Lindwall for eight, and Colin. ‘I sit with my pads on while 180 is scored and then get a very quick 0, first ball to Ian Johnson. Everybody expected us to declare but Len decides to go on batting. They put us in and they had better bowl us out.’ They didn’t. Hutton did eventually declare but not before he had well and truly rubbed his opponents’ noses in it.
There was time for England to force the follow-on but that was about it. The final act of the series had a touch of farce about it. Benaud had a wild heave against, would you believe, Hutton, who had brought himself on to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, the match was over, and was bowled. Immediately afterwards, the players shook hands and the game, and the series, really was over.
And how did our hero celebrate? ‘I have a terrific haircut. I SMOKE MY SECOND CIGAR AND DO A CHURCHILL!’ The capitals are his.
The tour, however, was not over. In those days, a two-Test series against New Zealand was tacked on to the end of the Australian leg. It is odd to hear the modern international cricketer complaining about the amount of time spent away from home. Although no one can deny that the schedule is punishing and the physical toll onerous, nothing can compare, surely, with six months continuously on the road. Or rail. Or sea.
It would be interesting to unearth what the players thought about a further month’s cricket in New Zealand after the pressures and rigours of an Ashes series. They had achieved what they had set out to do. Now, they must have been tired and getting sick of each other’s company. Colin believed that the party was more or less equally split in their feelings about the New Zealand leg. The older ones, married and with families, were not unnaturally keen to get home. The younger ones, with no family ties, especially those whose roles in Australia had been largely restricted to walk-on parts, were more sanguine. Colin only saw opportunity. ‘All I wanted to do was play cricket,’ he wrote.
In fact, the cricket was as dull as the country was beautiful and the inhabitants hospitable. The pitches were slow and low, the balls were of an inferior type and the opposition, frankly, second-rate. Colin preferred the ball to come on to the bat and was at his best when the heat was on. He did top score with 42 in a low-scoring first Test, in which Tyson took seven wickets, and England won comfortably by eight wickets.
The second game in the series provided an interesting footnote in Test match history. Tom Graveney told me the story. It featured Hutton. Of course it featured Hutton. Most of what had happened on this tour had featured Hutton. But on this occasion, he is seen at his wryly humorous best. ‘Typical Len, really,’ Graveney chuckled. ‘New Zealand scored 200. We got 266. As he led us out to field, he announced, “Reet, lads, we’ve got a lead of 46. Just enough to beat ’em by an innings.” And we did! We bowled them out for 26! It was all over in one and a half hours.’ To this day, it remains the lowest total ever recorded in a Test match. It was also the final team talk of England’s leader. He was mentally and physically exhausted and that was his last appearance on a Test match ground. He retired not long after.
By now, Colin had been informed that his mother was gravely ill, news that had been kept from him until the completion of the match. In view of the death of his father at the start of the tour, the very sensible decision was taken to send him home on the next available plane, with Graveney as his travelling companion.
On their circuitous journey back to England, via Fiji, Honolulu, San Francisco and New York, the two of them struck up a firm friendship that was to take in long careers in the game, often side-by-side, lasting up until the time of Colin’s death. They were actually cut from the same cloth, though the tall, spare frame with the rubicund face that was Graveney’s did not much resemble the fuller figure of Cowdrey. One came from the Dark Blue of Oxford, the other from the khaki of the army. But they both had a charm and ease of manner, they were both adored by cricket lovers the world over, they were both hero-worshipped in their home counties (Graveney had two) and they were both stylists with a bat in their hand.
Their Test records were remarkably similar. Graveney’s average was 44.38 and Cowdrey’s 44.06. They were both still playing Test cricket in their forties and their first-class careers were equally enduring; Graveney played for 24 years and Cowdrey for 26. They both, let us not forget, bowled a filthy brand of leg-spinners, which in Graveney’s case snaffled 80 first-class victims and in Cowdrey’s case, 65. In their retirement, they both assumed the highest position at Lord’s, president of MCC. And both, surprisingly, shared an occasional crisis of confidence in their ability during their playing career.
‘Were we great players?’ mused Tom, during one such reminisce. ‘Probably not. But we both played great innings.’ Of the tour to Australia they had just undergone, they had time to look back and assess as they flew across half the globe. ‘I hadn’t had a great tour,’ Tom confessed, ‘but there, neither did other more experienced players, Bedser, Compton, Edrich, Len himself with the bat. It was clear that it was the youngsters who had won it for us, May and Cowdrey with the bat and Tyson and Statham with the ball. It was the changing of the guard really.’
Both felt that they were very much part of that future. But ironically, much as they loved Australia and its people, both were to be ultimately disappointed in their encounters with the old enemy on the field of play. Graveney’s record against Australia was patchy, in direct contrast to the way his career flourished against other countries. And Colin’s sadness at never leading an England team to Australia is an undercurrent that runs through this book.
* * * * *
Together with the rest of the cricket-loving supporters in England, Colin listened to the announcement of the MCC touring party to Australia and New Zealand for the winter of 1974/75 with more than passing interest. It had been three years since he had had any personal involvement in the list of names but he was still playing first-class cricket, he knew all the players involved – among whom he believed there would be a large Kent contingent – and he would have had his own opinions on the make-up of the team.
Did he harbour hidden hopes that, against all expectations, he would be called up again? After all, the selectors had surprised him once before, 20 years ago. Could lightning strike twice? He had been on five tours of Australia, one short of the record set by Johnny Briggs, who toured six times in the late 1800s. Should he not be satisfied with that doughty achievement and put his feet up in front of the fire for a well-deserved winter’s rest? After all, he was 41 and county cricket, though still enjoyable, was taking a toll on his stamina.
But still something rankled in his heart, a feeling of being unfulfilled, a sense of a job not yet done. His fifth, and no doubt final, tour Down Under had been a deeply unhappy time. All his life, he had dreamed of leading England to Australia, a place he loved and where he was loved. It had never happened and once he had been passed over as captain for the 1970/71 tour in favour of Raymond Illingworth, he recognised that now he probably never would. He had lost form, he had been dropped and thereafter he remained a sad and peripheral figure among the tourists, past his sell-by date. He had not been selected for England again. It was the end.
Or was it? No player of the ability and stature of Colin Cowdrey ever really believes the game is up. There is always another innings, one last, glorious swansong, one final triumphant walk back to the pavilion, cap doffed and bat raised to the cheering crowd. So had he listened to the announcement of the touring party on the radio with just a slight twinge of hope, a vague fluttering of the heart? After all, he had been batting pretty well that summer. Not quite with the fluency and weight of runs of his heyday but he flattered himself that he could still cut the mustard at the highest level and nobody else, let’s be fair, shared his experience and know-how of Australian conditions and Australian wickets.
Earlier in the season, he had been hit on the jaw and knocked out by a fearsome bouncer from Andy Roberts, something that had never happened to him before. For a few days afterwards, while recuperating, he had reflected upon this and asked himself, seriously, whether he was still up to facing the quickest of bowling. As we know, Colin and self-doubt were not entirely strangers. This is ridiculous, he told himself; it’s time to get a grip. I can still do this.
He missed Kent’s next game at The Oval but played the following week against Somerset. In both innings, he was done for by Hallam Moseley, another West Indian quick, and his confidence was at a low ebb. The next match was at Tunbridge Wells, against Hampshire, as fate would have it, and Roberts had Colin in his sights, the way fast bowlers do. You might say normal service was resumed. After softening him up with a few rapid bouncers, he had his prey snared at short leg, fending off another rib-cruncher.
Graham Johnson, Kent’s all-rounder, told me much later, ‘Colin was as white as a sheet when he came back into the dressing room. “I was nearly killed out there,” he muttered. We said nothing because it wasn’t far from the truth.’
I have the account of James Graham-Brown, a young lad on the Kent staff at the time, to describe what happened next. ‘I lived quite near him; he used to pick me up in his car to go to matches. I was surprised to get a call from him to come over to his house. Of course, I did as I was asked. He said that he wasn’t happy about his technique at facing bouncers and wanted me to throw balls at him from 15 yards, to sharpen up his reactions and to practise playing the short ball.
‘I was astonished that someone as famous and as talented as he would admit to such doubts but admired his determination to climb back on the horse, so to speak. I threw balls at him until my arm ached, hoping I was doing him some good.’
Evidently he did because on his return to first team duty at Tunbridge Wells against Sussex, with John Snow at his most hostile, Colin made 107 out of a total of 282. For good measure, there was another masterful hundred, undefeated this time, against Gloucestershire, with Mike Procter bowling at full pelt. Nerve was restored and he was now firmly back in the saddle.
So, had the call come from the selectors, he believed he was ready. But of course, it never did. Alec Bedser, the chairman of selectors, was asked by a journalist whether they had considered Cowdrey for the touring party. ‘Yes we did,’ answered Bedser at his diplomatic best, ‘but not for long.’ The talking point among press and pub critics was the omission of John Snow and Geoff Boycott, both linchpins in Illingworth’s successful tour in 1970/71. Boycott was on his self-imposed sabbatical; Snow’s exclusion was less easily understood. Nobody was seriously thinking about Cowdrey. Refusing to admit to even a touch of disappointment, Colin lit the fire, put up his feet and watched the highlights on television.
Even he, used to horror stories in Brisbane for the first Test of an Ashes series, must have winced at the events that unfolded at the Gabba in early December 1974. A tornado blew into town and, as tornadoes do, it left a trail of devastation in its wake. The tornado’s name was Thomson. There had been no blip on the radar, no severe weather warning, no prior battening down of hatches and boarding up of windows.
The England team had heard of Jeff Thomson but rather like Michael Fish on the BBC, they had discounted any possibility of a storm heading their way. Furthermore, Dennis Lillee had recently undergone surgery on a stress fracture of the back and was not thought to be anywhere near match fit. They were brutally disabused of both presumptions in an assault by the Australian fast bowlers that Christopher Martin-Jenkins, the BBC cricket correspondent covering the tour, described as ‘so fearsome that even hardened campaigners in the press box were seen to blanch’.
In a nutshell, England were blown away, losing the Test by 166 runs. But it was the ferocious manner in which Lillee and Thomson hunted down their prey which sent shock waves through the England batsmen, an experience from which they did not recover, not until perhaps the Ashes had long since been lost. For some of them, it was a traumatic chapter from which they never recovered. Martin-Jenkins described Thomson’s bowling at Brisbane thus, ‘He bowled with stinging speed and got the ball to bounce from a good length with truly frightening malignity. Dennis Lillee, the fastest bowler in the world when last he had played against England, was made to look second best.’
That may have been so but as the series progressed and Lillee became more and more confident of his back, he bowled faster and faster. Wisden reported, ‘Watching these two in action, it was easy to believe that they were the fastest pair ever to have coincided in a cricket team.’
Ironically, it was the Englishmen who had started the bouncer war. In Willis, Lever and Greig, they had the firepower to deliver short balls of pace, bounce and menace. Indeed, it could be said that the first person to drive a coach and horses through the unwritten law that tail-enders should be spared the short stuff was Tony Greig. That would hardly surprise those who knew and had been at the sharp end of the native South African’s combative attitude on the field of play. He had dismissed Lillee with a bouncer in the first innings of the series and the mouthed response from the Australian as he quit the scene left no one in any doubt that the Poms could expect ample payback. Which is precisely what they got, tenfold.
The psychological effect of the fast bowling barrage on the England team was immediate. And it wasn’t only their spirit that had been bruised. Bones too had been battered, some broken. Two front-line batsmen, Amiss and Edrich, had suffered fractures and were ruled out of the second Test at Perth, an even quicker and bouncier wicket than Brisbane. A replacement batsman was needed immediately. The management were in a quandary. The problem was not how but who. In these days of jet travel, a replacement could be flown out and be with them in 48 hours. In 1954/55, it would have taken three and a half weeks by sea.
No, the discussion centred on who could best cope with exceptional pace, such as few contemporary English batsmen had ever faced. Several names were put forward, Frank Hayes, John Jameson, Mike Harris and Barry Wood, who had all outscored Cowdrey in the recent English county season. But making runs on relatively benign English pitches was no preparedness for the blitzkrieg that lay in wait in Australia. Several of the senior members of the team put their heads together. In the words of Martin-Jenkins, ‘In their hour of need, MCC turned to a man who for 20 years had played against the greatest fast bowlers in the world, one of the magical names of cricket, Michael Colin Cowdrey.’
So, why Cowdrey? Or, to put it another way, yes, of course Cowdrey, but why now, when he was 41? Nobody is the same player at 41 as he was at 21, or even 31. For an answer, I sought the views of several players who were on that tour. Derek Underwood said that, even at this late stage of his career, ‘He was considered to be the best at playing the quicks.’ Geoff Arnold remembered discussions among the team as to who would be the best bet. ‘Kipper was as fine a player of fast bowling as there was,’ he said, ‘and to be honest, there were not many options.’ Bob Willis made this observation, ‘Here were Lillee and Thommo peppering our batsmen and we needed someone with experience who could counter them. I don’t remember being consulted personally. It seemed the decision was made by the management, not the selectors back home. But I do know that Denness rated him very highly.’
There was the large Kent contingent in the party, he reminded me, all of whom knew Colin well and would have been firmly in his corner. For the record, the Kent group comprised the captain himself, Denness, Underwood, Knott and Luckhurst. Furthermore, battle-hardened warriors such as Amiss, Edrich, Fletcher, Greig and Titmus had been team-mates of his in England sides in the recent past and knew his pedigree. As Willis said, it was a fait accompli. It was not the press that shouted his name. It was not the management that chose him. It was not MCC back at Lord’s that made the decision. It was not public opinion that clamoured for his recall. No, it was the players’ initiative. And there is no greater accolade than a vote of confidence from your peers.
According to son Christopher, his father really did have his feet up in front of the fire but was actually listening to the Test on the radio when the call came, not watching it on the television. As Thomson and Lillee were running amok, Colin was uttering involuntary oohs and aahs as the England batsmen sparred, missed and ducked. One of the commentators remarked that what England needed was someone with experience and skill to take on this Australian attack, an old-fashioned player, someone like Cowdrey, for example. ‘Quite so,’ agreed Colin. At which point, Mike Denness, 10,000 miles away in Brisbane, picked up the phone and dialled Colin’s home number. Would Colin be prepared to fly out and lend a hand to the beleaguered team was the question. Colin’s reply was immediate. ‘I’d love to.’
His family and friends thought he was mad. ‘Dad,’ Christopher reminded him, ‘you’re 41. Why on earth would you want to put yourself through all that?’ The response was pure Colin. ‘I think it will be rather fun.’ He was, in cricketing terms, practically a pensioner, he hadn’t picked up a bat since the conclusion of the previous season, he had everything to lose and little to gain by accepting and of course there was the real possibility of his getting injured, perhaps seriously, as other, younger batsmen on the tour had already discovered to their cost. But he was undaunted.
If his country came calling, who was he to refuse? After all, this was Australia, practically his second home. He packed his coffin, and after a quick net indoors at Sevenoaks, he boarded a Boeing 727 for Perth. The flight was not exactly uneventful. Following some engine trouble, the plane was diverted to Bombay, where there was a frustrating 22-hour delay while the technical hitch was fixed. Eventually, after a journey of 47 hours, rapid enough when compared to the voyage on SS Orsova 20 years previously, he landed in Perth.
A.C. Smith was the assistant manager of the MCC touring party and remembers driving to the airport to pick him up to take him to the team hotel. How was he when you met him? ‘Oh, typically Colin,’ A.C. smiled. ‘There was a huge scrum of reporters and cameramen because everybody in the country was intrigued by England sending for an old man – a sure sign of desperation on our part – but he charmed everybody, smiling and chatting, not at all put out by all the hassle. He was asked what he felt about facing two of the most terrifying fast bowlers in the history of the game and he grinned and said something like, what have I got to worry about – after all, I have faced McDonald and Gregory in my time.’ For the record, Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald had destroyed England in the Ashes series of 1921.
After a much-needed night’s sleep, he was in the nets early the next day. He was fortunate, and grateful, that two former sparring partners, Tony Lock, currently coaching in Perth, and Graham McKenzie, still a regular in the Western Australian side, bowled and bowled to him in the hot Perth sunshine. Colin was keen that McKenzie, who had lost little of his pace even at a late stage of his career, should not hold back. McKenzie, a surprisingly gentle soul for a fast bowler, did not but he could not stop himself warning Colin when he was going to send down a bouncer.
As a start, it had seemed to go well but Colin was perfectly aware that a couple of net practices was no adequate preparation for playing in a Test match. He needed time in the middle. And that was precisely what he was not going to get. For all that, Woodcock observed, ‘Cowdrey could have done no more to cram two months’ practice into three days,’ and Martin-Jenkins wrote, ‘He went through his preparation with all the calm dignity of a bishop, with time, a word and a smile for everyone.’
It would be interesting to pick Colin’s brains about his feelings as he embarked on his sixth tour of Australia, whether he was excited, apprehensive, intimidated by the prospect of putting his reputation, to say nothing of his creaking body, on the line in the service of his country when a cosy fire, with a drink to hand, might well have seemed the more attractive proposition. Alas, he is no longer with us to ask. He would not have confided in friends and team-mates. Not really. What top-class sportsman ever admits publicly to doubts and misgivings?
But here, at this juncture, I stumbled upon some gold dust among his papers. In his unpublished book, which he only had time to jot down in draft form before he died, I discovered a whole chapter on fast bowling and how to play it. His comments on coping with Lillee and Thomson are illuminating.
On the long flight from the UK, he did give the matter some thought. Plenty of it apparently. Analytical as always about his cricket, he pondered how best to combat what he called ‘two of the most hostile bowlers that have ever been’. Was he scared, he asked himself. Nobody enjoys facing fast bowling; if he says different, he is a bluffer. Colin was no exception. In the back of every batsman’s mind is the worry of getting hit. He averred, ‘More players are more scared of getting hit on the head than they would like to admit.’
But he felt ‘relaxed’ about the battle that lay ahead, for three reasons. First, he had been facing fast bowlers for 20 years and believed that he had ‘learnt a few tricks along the way’. Above all, he was confident of his technique. Secondly, he reckoned he was ‘a better player under hot sunshine, good light and faster pitches’. And thirdly, he was sure that he would be able to watch and observe Lillee and Thomson from the dressing room while he acclimatised.
On the first two counts, he was proved right. On the third, his optimism was greatly misplaced. ‘It never crossed my mind that I would be playing in the Test match at Perth,’ he wrote. The injury crisis, one that Alec Bedser described as the like of which he could not remember in all his years in cricket, was worse than Colin realised. The touring party was down to 11 fit men on the morning of the match and he was in. England won the toss, elected to bat and back came Denness from the middle to inform Colin he was batting at number three. At the very least, he had expected to be tucked away somewhere in the middle order but no, prime position it was to be. The best batsman in the side normally takes the number three slot so it was with that characteristic ironic little smile that he padded up.
Tony Greig watched him closely. ‘As Colin released the lock of his cricket case,’ he later wrote, ‘it sprang open as if alive. Then gradually, like bread rising in an oven, a mountain of foam rubber rose from the interior. This was Cowdrey’s protection and he had obviously been well briefed. He padded almost every part of his body but nobody laughed. We had seen enough to convince ourselves he was right.’ And then Colin took his place in a seat to watch the opening overs. Not for nothing was the seat known as The Condemned Man’s Chair.
I wasn’t being strictly accurate when I said he was unable to watch the Australian opening attack from the sidelines; in point of fact he had one hour in that chair before the first wicket fell and up he stood, putting on his gloves and cap, to go out and meet his Maker, as some of the team dryly put it. I leave it to Martin-Jenkins to describe the scene, ‘It was the signal for tears to prick the eyes of all but the stony-hearted. For out of the pavilion, rotund beneath his MCC sweater, blue England cap proudly worn, stepped Colin Cowdrey in his 11g0th Test match and his first for three and a half years. A great crescendo of applause greeted him as, with his old familiar walk, stooping slightly forwards as he moved, he strode out to face the music.’ Who ever said that Australians were an unsentimental lot?
That is with the exception perhaps of captain Ian Chappell and the twin spearhead of his attack. The exchange between Colin and Jeff Thomson, once he had gained the middle, has gone down in cricket folklore. That has more to do with Thomson, because it takes the form of his piece de resistance in interviews, cabaret acts and after-dinner speeches at which he is invited to reminisce.
Colin would have thought the little chit chat hardly out of the ordinary, merely a snippet of polite, everyday intercourse. Thomson always says that he will remember the scene to his dying day, ‘This 41-year-old man, with a teardrop figure, walking up the wicket, past the umpire to where I was ready to bowl, all revved up to kill someone and this bloke comes up to me and says, “Mr Thomson, I believe. It’s good to meet you.”’ Thomson’s alleged riposte tends to differ depending on the composition of his audience. It is either, ‘Piss off, fatso, that’s not gonna help you,’ or, ‘Good luck if you think that’s gonna be any help.’
I will leave you to decide which is the more likely. All I shall say is that the greeting was a world away from Keith Miller’s on Colin’s first appearance in the middle at a Test match, ‘G’day, young Cowdrey.’ Mind you, he did follow up that cheery greeting with a bouncer first ball.
‘There was a strong wind blowing down the ground,’ noted Colin, ‘and Thomson and Lillee took it in turns to bowl downwind, with Max Walker, a fine bowler in his own right, with an economical action, upwind.’ How did he cope? More than one onlooker feared he might not. Derek Underwood thought he looked old and feared he was past it. John Woodcock, by now a firm friend of Colin’s, said that he felt as shaky as if his own son were facing and had to take himself off to the bar to calm his nerves.
He was sure that Colin got away with a confident LBW shout first ball and then watched in admiration as ‘the old boy got stuck in’. Bob Willis knew what a fine player Colin had been but privately wondered whether ‘this Falstaffian figure, now 41, still had it in him’. Geoff Arnold and others in the dressing room ‘marvelled at the old fella’s courage but doubted that he should ever have been put in this position’.
How did ‘the old fella’ manage? In his own words, ‘What I did was to give myself a strong talking to between balls. It went like this – no backlift, right fingers on splice, move back early, stand motionless, head and eyes still.’
Those who have faced fast bowling might say that there is nothing revolutionary in all this. It makes sense. Easy to say, of course, not so easy to implement. Discipline was paramount, according to Colin’s model, deciding which balls to play and which to leave. ‘Anything wide or higher than the stumps, leave alone. Then, when the eye is in, certain shots come into play, the defensive push for one, or the odd stroke for four. All the rest can wait until later in the innings.’
This simple but effective technique had been developed over years of trial and error. His mind went back 14 years, to a torrid time in the West Indies, when he had been thrown in at the deep end and forced to ‘learn a hard lesson’. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he had been asked to open. Together with Geoff Pullar, he had gone out in Trinidad to take on the might of a triumvirate of West Indian fast bowlers, Wes Hall, Charlie Griffith and Chester Watson, and had found the experience overwhelming. He had been dismissed for 18 and five and he retired to his hotel room in a gloomy frame of mind. ‘Clearly, they were too quick for me. I had to adapt my technique.’ Pretty successfully, it transpired. In the next Test, he made 114 and 97 and thereafter, with a great deal of practice in the nets, he perfected his craft.
The crucial factor was stillness at the crease. ‘A clear photograph needs a still head. Therefore, must move back and across before delivery. But don’t put weight on back foot and get stuck there. Balance on ball of foot, ready to spring into action for any shot (or evasive action). It’s amazing how many balls can actually be left alone.’ In the end, he said, the repetition of movement became a sort of jingle in his head, ‘Move early. Stop still. Ready to pounce or leave alone.’
Derek Randall used to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ as Dennis Lillee ran in to bowl. Marcus Trescothick’s favoured refrain at the crease was by Eminem. Michael Clark would hum ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’. Chacun a son gout.
And what about the ball which rears up from just short of a length and is impossible to avoid, ‘getting big on you’ as they say nowadays? This was Colin’s method of self-preservation, ‘In pre-helmet days, I used to use the left shoulder as a defensive buffer, as a last resort to shield the head, particularly in those awful moments when you lose sight of the ball as it comes off the pitch.’
Thankfully, he did not lose sight of it as came off the lightning-fast Perth track. He took a few blows but for the most part, it was gritty and resolute defence. Between overs, he wandered down the pitch to chat to his batting partner, David Lloyd. He did not know Lloyd well. There had been no leisurely six weeks aboard ship to get to know each other; the two of them had not even shared a flight. Lloyd has recounted the story many times. ‘This is fun, isn’t it?’ Colin remarked. Lloyd’s reply was pure Lancashire. ‘Ah can think of foonier places than this!’
At length, after 125 minutes of what Martin-Jenkins described as ‘a splendid and courageous example to less plucky team-mates’, Colin was bowled leg stump, perhaps shuffling across too far this time, for 22. In the second innings, who emerged from the dressing room to open with Lloyd instead of the injured Brian Luckhurst but the comfortable figure of Colin Cowdrey?
Once again, he had been pressed into service, unwillingly but uncomplainingly, at the top of the order. He was there, looking on horrified at the other end when Lloyd was struck amidships by a thunderbolt from Thomson, another old chestnut that Lloyd has delighted his audiences with over the years. It was of course no laughing matter at the time.
It begs the question, how fast was Thomson? He was once measured by a speed gun as bowling at 98mph but Thommo being Thommo, he always said that the experiment had been carried out in the nets, it was a cold day and he had not even taken his sweater off. ‘Aw look mate, I was only in fourth gear,’ he claimed. ‘I had another gear to go.’ Those speed guns were notoriously unreliable anyway and have now disappeared from Test match grounds. Was he faster than Tyson? Larwood? Shoaib Akhtar was once timed at 100mph but Bob Willis told me that was with ‘the advantage of a bent arm more than the legal 15 per cent’. He went on to say that it was undeniably true that ‘Thommo was the quickest I have ever played with or against, and that includes all those West Indian pacemen of the 1970s.’
Geoff Arnold told me that he did not believe it was possible for anyone to bowl faster. But it wasn’t so much the sheer speed that undid the England batsmen, it was the fierce lift he got, together with the unusual slinging action, that surprised them, then hit them, then demoralised them. I remember talking to the Kent boys during the summer following this tour. They told me that Luckhurst went white whenever talk of the tour surfaced; he was so shell-shocked. He was not alone. It did for the international careers of quite a few of that team. Or as John Edrich wryly observed to his batting partner, Fred Titmus, during one particularly brutal onslaught, ‘One tour too many, Fred.’
Through it all, Colin was batting with a calmness that was extraordinary. Once again, ‘he set an example’, wrote Martin-Jenkins, ‘to team-mates that ought to have been shamed by the way he was withstanding two of the fastest bowlers in the world after only five days’ practice.’ The coveted three-figure score that even the partisan Perth crowd would not have begrudged was not to be; he was LBW to Thomson for 41. Some might say that 41, on that pitch, against that attack, in that situation would have been worth a hundred at other times in other parts of the world. It was all in vain though. England were routed by nine wickets. Colin felt he had done himself justice. His tried and tested technique had withstood the most searching of examinations and he was happy with that. Alec Bedser agreed, ‘He has done far more than we could possibly have asked of him.’
By now, England were a beaten team. The Ashes were finally surrendered at Sydney in the fourth Test but the result had been a foregone conclusion long before that. Even if the Grand Old Man, as Colin had been dubbed, had been able to summon up the heroics of yesteryear, it is doubtful it would have made much of a difference. It is doubtful that any batting side in world cricket would have been able to withstand the onslaught from Lillee and Thomson, which bordered on the savage at times.
Everybody I have spoken to who faced them on that tour is adamant that there were times when life and limb were at risk. ‘Thommo hit me on the elbow before I’d even picked my bat up,’ Arnold said. ‘And Lillee towards the end was bowling just as quick. He bowled a ball at me that flew past my nose, over Marsh’s head and disappeared one bounce into the crowd. They all said I didn’t see it and I could have been killed. Dunno about that. I saw it go past me but I couldn’t do very much about it.’ Let’s not forget that tail-enders had to bat as well and there was no let-up in the ferocity of the barrage. To put the travails of the England side into context, it is as well to have it in mind that the West Indies, with a batting line-up comprising Fredericks, Greenidge, Rowe, Kallicharan, Richards and Lloyd, fared no better the following season in Australia. England lost the series 4-1. The West Indies lost 5-1.
Colin made no significant score in the remaining Tests but constant references to his courage were made on both sides of the press divide, as he seemed to be the one continually taking the brunt of the Thomson-Lillee assault. Several times, he settled in, content to take the sting out of the fast bowlers, but failed to go on to make the large score that none would have begrudged. ‘His defence was flawless,’ wrote Martin-Jenkins, ‘but his attacking shots in front of the wicket were no longer at his beck and call.’
For all that, I sense it was a happy farewell to his Test career. ‘Far happier than his previous tour to Australia,’ Willis told me. ‘On that tour, 1970/71, which seemed at the time to be the end for him, he cut a sad, disconsolate figure, for reasons that are well documented. But on this tour, he felt at home and enjoyed himself.’
Was he part of the team? By that I mean, did he socialise and integrate or was he a bit distant once play had ended for the day? ‘Well, he wasn’t one who propped up the bar in the evenings. That wasn’t his style. But he was very much part of the team and was a helpful and encouraging presence in the dressing room. He had been on six tours there, don’t forget, so he had loads of friends all over the place and would go out to dinner with them. He’d invite one or two of us along sometimes, if he felt we’d be interested. He was an amateur really, although amateurs no longer officially existed. That was the era in which he grew up so it was no surprise that he knew all these important people all over the country. He was fine, a real gentleman, in the old-fashioned sense.’
Arnold was in complete agreement. ‘Kipper was a good lad, one of the team. I didn’t know him well beforehand but I found him to be a really nice chap. An utter gent.’
How was team spirit? It must have taken a bit of a hammering. There must have been times when everybody wished it could just finish and they could all go home? Arnold disagreed. ‘People said that team spirit was poor and a few of the press blamed the presence of wives for part of the time for breaking up the camaraderie that you build up on tour. Not true. Team spirit was fine. Some of us weren’t too keen on Denness as a captain but that was on the field. Off it, we got along fine and although results were not going our way, we did our best to enjoy it.’
He then went on to make a valid and significant point. ‘Look,’ he said, warming to his theme, ‘people are still talking about that series. Often, I’m stopped and asked about that tour and what it was like playing against Lillee and Thomson. It was a famous series and we felt privileged to have been a part of it. Of course it was uncomfortable at times but what an experience!’
At the end of the series, after England had won the sixth and final Test at Melbourne (both Lillee and Thomson were injured, by the way), the Australian crowd unfurled a banner over the boundary railings, ‘MCG fans thank Colin – 6 tours’.
Ever mindful of his manners and grateful for the gesture, Colin made a point of going over there to chat and to sign autographs, for an age it seemed. Nothing was ever too much trouble for him. Willis laughed at the memory and added a subtext to the happy scene. ‘As Colin walked past, raising his bat on his way back to the dressing room for the last time, some young wag shouted out, “Hey, Cowdrey, you’re a podgy fucker!” When Colin went over there to sign autographs, he signed himself PF!’