Test Cricketer 1955–67
‘It would have saved me a great deal of pain.’
Colin Cowdrey’s remark on being
recalled – again – to the England captaincy
and being sacked – again.
IT must have occurred to Colin as he set foot on the tarmac back in England on his return from Australia after the 1954/55 tour, if it had not occurred to him before, that everything had changed. He was still, officially anyway, an undergraduate of Oxford University, having been given leave of absence by Brasenose College to go on tour. He had not taken his finals.
His tutors were expecting him back. The college had a fine sporting tradition and it was hoped that he would lead the Dark Blues to victory against Cambridge that summer – at last. But he was now an established England cricketer. So what was it to be, Lord’s in the Varsity match or Lord’s in a Test match?
A.C. Smith gave a characteristic guffaw when I brought up this conundrum. He was also a Brasenose man and though he and Colin did not overlap at Oxford – four years separated the two – the precedent of the older student’s experience impacted significantly on the younger.
‘Colin had been given time off by BNC to go to Australia,’ A.C. recounted, ‘on the understanding that he came back to finish his studies and take his degree.’ Again that Smith laugh filled the room. ‘By that of course they meant to play cricket. But it was impossible. There was no way he could go back! The situation had changed. So when he left, they were not best pleased. I know that for a fact because when I asked for leave of absence to go on tour, they refused, worried that I would do a runner, like Colin.’
Brasenose’s displeasure was not long-lasting. Colin later made his peace with the college and became president of the BNC Society and was instrumental in bringing A.C. back into the fold to succeed him in that position.
If Colin was quietly relieved that he would never again have to enter an examination hall, an examination of another kind was now at the forefront of his mind. He may have been able to extricate himself from further academic study but the RAF and National Service were not to be denied. To those of us from a different generation, the very idea of spending two years in the armed services when a military career holds no interest or appeal seems unimaginable but for Colin’s generation it was a fact of life. He made his calculations; if he signed up immediately, he would be free to resume his cricket career in the summer of 1957, just in time for the West Indians. With hindsight, he would therefore have missed 11 Tests, one century and 626 runs.
The old injury, however, was to spare him the square bashing, though the resulting controversy left him in no doubt that being excused National Service on medical grounds was something of a mixed blessing. As instructed, he presented himself for a physical examination by the RAF doctors. Following the winter in Australia, he had, in his own words, ‘a suntan like a Red Indian’ and he cannot have appeared to be anything other than in the rudest of health. But somewhere in his notes, there was the reference to the trouble with his feet and the operation he had undergone while at Tonbridge. Perplexed, the medics referred him to a consultant in London, who took one look at his toes and had him discharged from service with immediate effect.
So far, so good. No doubt relieved to be excused from military duty, he discarded a blue uniform and donned a white one, at the same time running into a rich vein of form. Successive scores of 44, 101, 5, 139, 48, 44, 115* and 103* would have been welcome at any other time but he had not reckoned on the fierce censure of the British public. No matter that he had been a linchpin of Hutton’s Ashes-winning team Down Under, he was now dodging the draft, pulling a fast one, taking the authorities for a ride, hoodwinking Matron for an off-games chit, in short, exploiting his connections in high places to evade his duty. How could anyone who scores 600 runs in a fortnight possibly be considered ‘unfit’?
He went from hero to zero almost overnight. Once the press got hold of the story, the criticism was relentless and merciless. Worse, the poison pen letters started to pour in, some of them deeply upsetting. We shouldn’t forget that Colin was still only 21 and though he had been through the fire of an Ashes series, he was yet an ingénue in worldly affairs. He was no seasoned politician, accustomed to public scrutiny and media derision. He was a sensitive soul, wary of criticism and uncomfortable with friction and discord.
Willie Hamilton, the Labour MP for West Fife, in a speech made this cutting observation, ‘If he is fit to undertake a tour of Australia, surely he is fit to peel spuds in the RAF.’ And then Colin’s name was brought up in the House of Commons by Gerald Nabarro, Conservative MP for Kidderminster, he of the handlebar moustache and Terry-Thomas accent, in a question about the privileged few who were able to pull a few strings and ‘dodge the column’ when every other fit male of a certain age had to do National Service.
Up until now, Colin had done his best, as you would expect, to keep a low profile, taking the trouble to reply to all those letters – the ones that were not anonymous, that is – explaining the situation. But this attack angered him and he wrote a polite rebuke to Nabarro at Westminster, laying out the facts. ‘By return of post,’ he wrote, ‘I was invited to meet him in his room in the House.’
The two had a fruitful discussion and it was not long before the young cricketer, naturally charming and emollient, had the crusty old parliamentarian eating out of his hand. Nabarro apologised profusely, his being ignorant of the facts of Colin’s particular case, and they both agreed on the wording of a public communiqué, absolving Colin of any charge of exerting undue influence in high places.
In Colin’s papers lies the original letter, on House of Commons notepaper, written in Nabarro’s ornate, slightly rococo, hand:
‘A meeting took place in the House of Commons on Wednesday evening 6th May 1955 between Mr Colin Cowdrey and Mr Gerald Nabarro to discuss the questions in the House during the last few weeks concerning National Service liabilities.
‘Mr Nabarro wishes to state unequivocally that he recognises no attempt was made by Mr Cowdrey either prior to, or during, his service in the Royal Air Force to secure exemption or even deferment of National Service. Mr Nabarro expressed his regret to Mr Cowdrey for any construction to the contrary arising from Mr Nabarro’s comments in the House… … …
‘Mr Cowdrey and Mr Nabarro have agreed that the matter is now amicably settled.
‘Signed: Gerald Nabarro
‘Countersigned: Colin Cowdrey’
Colin said he and the MP had parted on excellent terms. Thereafter, Gerald Nabarro concentrated on his endorsement of the Severn Valley Railway project, restoration of steam trains and dismantled lines being a particular hobby of his, and Colin returned to first-class cricket, perfectly executed cover drives being a particular hobby of his. The furore died down and the offensive letters dwindled, though never entirely. But the episode had scarred him. Thereafter, he remained wary of politicians, the popular press and public posturing.
There were in fact precious few cover drives in evidence when Colin was recalled to the Test side for the third match of the series against South Africa that season. Having been rapped on the knuckles for the umpteenth time by the Springbok pair of fast bowlers, Neil Adcock and Peter Heine, he might have thought wistfully that a bit of spud peeling in the RAF was not such a bad idea after all.
He made one in the first innings and therefore had plenty of time to watch one of Denis Compton’s virtuoso displays with the bat. Not Compton’s bat, you understand. He had left his own bat at home (all these stories about his forgetfulness, carelessness and lack of punctuality were true, it seems) so he had borrowed one of Fred Titmus’s ancient blades and with England’s score perilously placed at 75/4, he played like only he could to finish the day unbeaten on 155. Oh that such fluency had been at Colin’s beck and call in the second innings; he scored 50, painfully accumulated over four hours. There was no way his bruised hands would allow him play in the fourth Test but he was hopeful of declaring himself fit for the fifth and final match but another blow on the hand, this time from Trevor Bailey, put paid to that.
There was no overseas tour that winter and Colin was faced with an uncomfortable headache, one that had been afflicting him on and off ever since the RAF fiasco. He was an amateur and amateurs did not get paid. His father was now dead, his mother was back home but not in the best of health, he had no job and money was tight.
At which point in his life, enter, stage left, another individual who was to have a huge impact on his life. Stuart Chiesman, a member of the family that owned a large drapery store in Lewisham, as well as a chain of smaller stores around the south-east of England, was a Kent committee member and a great supporter and benefactor of the club. He served for 18 years on the committee before becoming chairman in 1959, a post he held until his death ten years later. His beneficence did not start and end with Kent cricket, generous though that might have been. He had been wounded twice in the First World War and as a result of his experiences, had set up and largely funded a charity for servicemen who had been blinded in the conflict.
According to Derek Ufton, a team-mate of Colin’s in his early days at the club, Chiesman ‘was a very nice man, much more approachable than committee men usually were in those days and he was in the habit of offering young players without winter employment a job in his store to tide them over’. Colin was no exception. Having been offered the job, he accepted with alacrity.
The eyes do widen a little at this point. We have Colin Cowdrey entering the lift of a department store owned by Grace Brothers, making small talk with Mrs Slocombe and Miss Brahms as he is whisked up to the floor for gentlemen’s clothing, there to be instructed in the retail trade by Captain Peacock and Mr Rumbold. Colin professed that he found the experience ‘fascinating’ but I bet he wasn’t being entirely truthful. Still, he was grateful and did his best not to confound his colleagues too much.
After a while, he began to forge a niche for himself. The intricacies of managing a department store may well have left him scratching his head but quickly he realised that his name ‘began to have a certain commercial value’. This knack of chatting to people and making them feel at ease was to stand him in even greater stead in later appointments on boards and governing bodies. For the time being, he was content to potter, occasionally with time on his hands. Frustratingly, that never seemed to happen on a Saturday, when he was anxious, but would never dare, to slip away to watch Charlton Athletic at The Valley. Coincidentally, the aforesaid Derek Ufton, who gained a cap for England ‘at football, let me tell you, though I would much rather it had been for cricket’, would come along to see Colin in the store.
‘Colin would be at a bit of a loose end,’ he said. ‘I was playing for Charlton at the time, so I had a winter job and had no need to take up the offer of work that Chiesman gave to the other young players. Anyway, I would get this call from Colin to go and have a coffee with him after training. I would present myself at the store and instead of being shown up to the boardroom or somewhere swanky like that, we would end up in the telephonist’s office, a small pokey room right at the top of the building. To this day I remember the telephonist pulling out the wires and plugging them back in as they used to do on those old switchboards. And there we’d have our coffee and chat. Lovely, lovely man Colin. He had so much time for everybody, even the telephone girl.’
Cheekily, Ufton asked his Kent team-mate why he wasn’t yet on the board at Chiesmans. Oh but he was, Colin answered, in fact there was a board meeting going on at that very moment. ‘But I don’t usually attend,’ he added, with that wry Cowdrey smile.
Colin’s financial well-being was now secure and he was free to pursue his career in cricket without those money worries that had forced the premature retirement from the game of innumerable amateurs down the years. Two of his contemporaries, Peter May and Ted Dexter, left the game before they might have done for that very reason. Dexter made no bones about it. ‘Somebody’s got to pay the bills,’ he said.
But there was a bit more to Chiesman’s generosity than merely securing employment for one of Kent’s most promising. It was clear to anyone with half a brain that Colin was being groomed for the Kent captaincy. He had all the necessary attributes – Tonbridge School, Oxford University and now an established England player. And, above all, he was an amateur. Professional captains had broken into the officer corps but they were few and far between. Chiesman would have known this and as a mover and shaker at the club, he would have taken it upon himself to ensure Colin’s smooth transition to the post.
He had taken care of the young man’s financial future; now, what about his love life? Men in high places like to take on the role of puppet master, even if their motives are honourable and kindly meant. He had two daughters, one of whom regularly attended home matches with him and was very keen on the game.
Penny Chiesman was, by all accounts, a force of nature. ‘I knew her well,’ said Ufton. ‘She would often chat to the players after the match and she was a delightful girl.’ David Kemp had known her even longer, when she was a young girl. ‘We used to play a lot of tennis. She was bright, attractive and, dare I say it, a bit naughty. She was expelled from school, as I remember, but I don’t know what for, so it can’t have been all that serious. I liked her enormously.’ John Woodcock remembered her as a ‘lively, striking woman with an energy bordering on the indefatigable’.
How much her father manipulated the situation is unclear but she was ever present at social functions at the club and it was not long before people noticed that she and Colin ‘would pair off’, as Kemp put it. ‘She adored Colin,’ he went on to explain, ‘as indeed did all women, for he had such excellent manners and he was, let’s face it, a good catch.’ At first slip now, it seemed. ‘You know what I mean,’ he gently chided me.
Colin married Penny the following summer, in 1956. Peter May was his best man and Rev. David Sheppard officiated at the ceremony. It was a match made, if not in heaven, then on the playing fields of Kent, which supporters of that county would have you believe is one and the same thing.
Stuart Chiesman may well have privately harboured even warmer feelings than having the future Kent, and, who knows, England, captain for a son-in-law. Four years previously, he had lost his son in the most tragic and dramatic circumstances. The boy had been attending the Farnborough Air Show together with his governess. A De Havilland 110 had just broken the sound barrier but then broke up in a manoeuvre owing to a fault in the wing design and had plummeted to earth. Thirty-one people, including the pilot, were killed in the ensuing inferno. Among the dead were Chiesman’s son and the governess.
Is it too capricious to imagine that Colin would become the son he had lost? And would it be stretching conjecture too far to suppose that Chiesman would become, in turn, another father figure to Colin? Certainly Colin’s regard for his father-in-law never wavered and he was deeply upset when he died.
Like all cricketers who get impatient with an enforced winter break, Colin’s pulse must have quickened as the 1956 season approached, and, what’s more, the Australians were in town. His form was good leading into the Tests but his mood was possibly less so. The selectors again had asked Kent to open with him with a view to his opening the batting for his country on a full-time basis. Who was he to rebuff the request but he was ambivalent about the assignment. The selectors’ ploy met with only moderate success. His partner throughout the series was Peter Richardson, who was by nature and upbringing an opener, and together they put on stands of 53 and 151, 22 and 35, 2, 174, 1 and 17 over the five Tests but Colin was unhappy with his contributions and felt, as did everybody else, that a series average of 30.50 was underwhelming.
Notwithstanding his own travails, he was right there in the middle of two memorable and extraordinary events in Ashes history. The first was over in a blink of an eye; the second took longer to evolve. At Lord’s in the second Test, which Australia won, Colin was playing well in the first innings, on 23 at the time, when he received a half-volley outside off from Ken Mackay. He laid into it. Though the ball swung fractionally at the last moment, which meant that he hit it squarer than he had intended, he had timed the shot so well that he fully expected it to race to the boundary. Richie Benaud at gully intercepted it and with astonishing reflexes managed to hold on to it, the force of the shot knocking him backwards.
The moment was caught on camera and the press very soon dubbed it ‘The Catch of the Century’. The photo shows Benaud with the ball in one hand, leading to the popular perception that he had caught it one-handed. He had not. As he was knocked off balance, one hand had shot out involuntarily to break his fall. When dismissed by such a flash of brilliance, there is nothing for it other than to give a resigned shrug of the shoulders and depart, which Colin did.
The second unforgettable episode took five days, more or less, if we take into account breaks for rain. Already, England’s off-spinner, Jim Laker, had undermined Australia’s confidence by taking 11-113 in the third Test at Headingley, helping the home side to victory by an innings and 42 runs. In the fourth Test at Old Trafford, he crushed them, taking 19-90, in what was to go down in history as ‘Laker’s Match’. Merely writing down those figures, 19 wickets, has a surreal feeling to it.
To take every wicket bar one in a two-innings match is nigh on impossible but the eyes do not deceive, the evidence is there in the scorecard. It is a feat that has never been equalled and it seems scarcely credible that it ever will. Colin had the best view of unfolding events at his customary station at first slip.
The question perennially asked is how Laker took 19 wickets and Lock, an equally destructive bowler on these pitches, took only one. Like everybody else, Colin had no answer to this; that is just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. He did offer an opinion, one that might have contributed to the disproportionate bowling analyses. He felt that Lock bowled a fraction too fast, so desperate was he to join in the turkey shoot, whereas Laker bowled with control and accuracy, eschewing variation of speed and turn, relying on the pitch to do its worst. It was ‘ruthlessly efficient’, he wrote.
In actual fact, he had caught Burke, Australia’s opener, in the first innings to give Lock his one and only wicket. One wonders whether he might have spilled it had it been the last wicket to fall, in order to give Laker the chance of taking all 20. He did have a point about Lock’s bowling. Laker, commenting many years later on what happened, wrote, ‘I reckon I knew more about Locky’s bowling than anyone and in fact he wasn’t bowling well; he was pushing them through a bit too quick and tending to be a bit short. On his day, of course, he could be very nearly unplayable – but not this match.’
England won by an innings and 170 runs and a draw in the fifth Test secured the Ashes once again. And subsequent Australian whinges about the wicket? Richie Benaud had this to say, ‘It was a terrible pitch but a terrible pitch on which England had made 459.’
Colin must have been relieved that, instead of attempting to master the intricacies of the cash register in Gentlemen’s Clothing under the critical eye of Captain Peacock, he was on the MCC tour to South Africa the following winter. Traditionally, tours to the union (it was not until 1961 that the country became a republic) were considered to be the most hospitable off the field and the most hostile on it. This one was no different.
South Africa were doughty opponents, recovering from losing the first two Tests to square the series. Their bowling attack of Adcock, Heine, Goddard and Tayfield was the equal of any country in the world, Colin reckoned. The opening pair of Adcock and Heine was as fast as any and greatly underestimated by the cricketing public, if not by the English batsmen. As for the off-spinner, Hugh Tayfield, it was observed that he, for long periods, reduced Colin to something approaching strokelessness. Wisden wrote, ‘Cowdrey on some days looked the highest class; on other occasions he found himself tied down completely by slow bowling, especially Tayfield.’
Mind you, he wasn’t the only one. The whole series was characterised by slow scoring. The same Wisden correspondent gave this heartfelt lament, ‘I hope never again to watch a series in which so many batsmen were frightened to make scoring strokes and mere occupation of the crease was the prime consideration of nearly everyone.’
The exception was Peter May. Throughout the tour, he stood head and shoulders in class and strokeplay above anybody else from either side and he alone seemed willing and able to take the initiative at the crease. It was a source of bafflement to all that he was unable to take this exceptional form into the Tests, where it seemed he couldn’t buy a run. A charming man and a fine leader but not possessed of robust health, it was conjectured that the cares of captaincy were getting to him. Colin, by now considered a senior member of the team and possible future captain, took note of his friend’s travails and wondered.
He said he felt very sorry for him and believed that one or two of his decisions, though proved wrong in retrospect, were understandable given that ‘after five days under pressure in a match of ups and downs, you were often, as it were, punch drunk. That is the life of a Test captain.’ Indeed. Colin would find out for himself soon enough. As for his own form, he confessed to feelings of disappointment. A series average of 33.10 would seem to bear this out.
Had he been accepted into the ranks of the RAF, Colin’s two years of service would have encompassed the first appearance of the Vulcan bomber, action stations in the Suez Crisis and the dropping of Britain’s first hydrogen bomb on Christmas Island in the south-west Pacific. It is doubtful that he would actually have been in the cockpit of any of those aircraft; more likely he would have been playing for the Combined Services in the company of future international colleagues, such as Peter Richardson, John Murray, David Allen, John Edrich, Phil Sharpe and Raman Subba Row. Peeling spuds!
Some of those fellows said that National Service was great for their cricket. In 1957, the time when he would have been demobbed, one wonders whether Colin would necessarily have been an automatic selection for the first Test that summer against the West Indies, no matter how heavily he had been scoring for the RAF and Combined Services. If he had not been, the English public would have been deprived of witnessing the greatest stand in which Colin was involved, in a series when perhaps it could be safely claimed he came of age as a Test match batsman.
Way back in 1950, the West Indies had secured a very popular and highly unlikely 3-1 series win against England, thanks largely to their two spinners, Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine. Between them, in the four Tests, they took 59 wickets and totally dominated the England batsmen. Their feats were immortalised in the calypso song ‘Those Two Pals of Mine, Ramadhin and Valentine’.
In the first Test of the 1957 series at Edgbaston, it seemed that Ramadhin’s dominance was undimmed; on the first day, on a flawless pitch, he teased and tormented his opponents, taking 7-49, as England were bowled out for 186. Colin did not face him for long – he was one of his victims, for only four – but he had plenty of time to study him from behind the bowler’s arm in the dressing room. He watched and he analysed and he cleared the decks for his retribution. Since his troubles with Tayfield during the winter, he had been pondering how best to counter spin. Now he was ready to put his strategy into effect.
Ramadhin. Now, was he an off-spinner who bowled a well-disguised leg break or was he a leg break and googly bowler? These ‘mystery’ slow bowlers have bamboozled batsmen and fascinated spectators down the ages, from Bernard Bosanquet, who invented the googly (known as a ‘bosie’ in Australia), to Clarrie Grimmett, to Jack Iverson, to John Gleeson, to Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, to Saqlain Mushtaq, to Muttiah Muralitharan. They have all woven their magic for a time.
Sonny Ramadhin’s wiles were never easy to unravel but by 1957, the England batsmen believed they had got his measure. After that first-innings rout, their doubts resurfaced. West Indies put the pitch into perspective by rattling up a large total (474) and the most England could aspire to would be a hard-fought draw. Reduced to 120/3, even that seemed a forlorn hope as Colin joined his captain in another one of those deep holes to which he had become accustomed to find himself.
By his own admission, neither of them at first could tell what Ramadhin was doing, which way it was going to turn. For the time being, Colin decided to play him as a leggie, playing down the line of the ball but with the hands ready to fall away if it turned, so he could let it go past the off stump. The trouble was he could not spot the googly, or the off-spinner, or whatever it was, the one that went the other way. Peter May came down the wicket to chide him whenever Colin was deceived, telling him to stop looking crestfallen. ‘Keep a poker face,’ he said. ‘Don’t let them know you’re rattled.’
Good advice, Colin agreed, but not so easy to put into operation when bowler, wicketkeeper and close fielders are all hopping around excitedly as another one goes past the bat. Over the years, he learned to remain expressionless. ‘Bowlers don’t bowl so well when they get angry,’ he observed in these unpublished notes of his.
He was finding it difficult to pierce the field. He would execute the correct stroke but the pitch was slow and Ramadhin’s field well set. May, at the other end, seemed to be afflicted by no such problems. ‘What he would do was to wait for the right ball,’ noted Colin, ‘plonk his foot down the line of leg stump, thereby giving himself room, to unleash a pick-up drive over mid-off or cover. By not getting his front foot close to the line of the ball, he was able to bring his whole body through with all his power.’
Colin went on to lament that this felt ‘odd and alien to me’ and he never felt confident enough to try the shot in the middle. There it is again, that word ‘confident’. How extraordinary that one so gifted should ever confess to lack of it.
By contrast, May, whom many, Colin included, deemed to be England’s finest post-war batsman, always seemed to be in control, no matter how treacherous the pitch, how intimidating the bowling and how tense the situation. Colin watched in admiration as May showed him how it should be done. ‘He was completely deceived in the air by one ball. He was committed to the stroke far too early but nipped into top gear and hit the ball clean out of the ground.’
There was another shot that took Colin’s breath, and nearly his head, away. May was on about 40 not out at the time, Colin recalled, and felt it was about time that he extricated himself from the tentacles that the medium-fast bowler, Dennis Atkinson, had wrapped around them. ‘Suddenly, the windmill was in action, a fierce drive just missed me at the other end and sent the umpire ducking. The ball kept on climbing and disappeared over the broadcasting box and landed on the far side of the tennis court, surprising the two players.’
Colin’s appraisal of the style and technique of his friend and captain is compelling reading, ‘Peter May and I batted more together for England than any other pair in English cricket but we had contrasting styles. He was enormously strong, big hands, powerful forearms. I have seen him strike the ball off the back foot over the bowler’s head into the pavilion at The Oval on several occasions. I wouldn’t have reached halfway.’
This reminded me of a comment from John Woodcock about Colin’s golf, ‘He had great touch around the greens but he was no long driver of the ball. Go on, I would say when we were playing together, give it a rip. Just smash it and see how far it will go. “Wooders, I can’t,” he’d reply. “I just can’t.” And he was right. He just couldn’t. It felt foreign to him. He needed pace on the ball. That was why sometimes, if the wicket was slow or his timing was a bit awry, he could be a bit pawky.’
It was a captivating contrast in styles as both batsmen started the day’s long grind for safety. May was more fluent, occasionally executing a fierce drive, whereas Cowdrey eschewed any risk whatsoever. They counted the runs and the time off in tens and both passed steadily. ‘Peter could stoke it when he wanted but he was more comfortable putting a strong punch through every ball he played... Whereas my game was based entirely on soft hands, bringing the bat in late and using the pace of the ball to find gaps in the field. Perfection of timing and accuracy of stroke – they provided for me the fun of batting.’
Their styles may have differed but their steely determination to see this through was identical. They both agreed that the flick on the leg side, a favourite shot of May’s, was too risky, as they were not always sure which way Ramadhin was spinning it. ‘For God’s sake,’ May instructed his partner, ‘stop me from playing that shot.’ They decided, as Colin put it, ‘to show our Maker’s name’. I assume that it was not the Almighty he was calling upon to bless their partnership but a slip of the pen, or rather a ‘typo’, as most of his notes are typewritten, for the capital letter. The maker he was referring to was the Slazenger logo on the face of his bat.
This self-denying ordinance made for slow going but it was highly strung, riveting Test match cricket. A mistake from either player would have meant curtains for their side. At the close of play, England had reached 378, both batsmen unbeaten, May on 193 and Cowdrey on 78. The lead was a mere 90 runs and when they resumed their partnership the next morning neither was kidding himself that they were yet out of the woods. The going was easier, Colin acknowledged, but not until he had reached his hundred did he feel able to relax and up the tempo.
At 5.24pm, perhaps the greatest, certainly the most famous, of England’s stands finally came to a close. Colin was caught at long-on, trying to hit a six, by a substitute fielder. Which of the footsore West Indians had forsaken the field of play for the sanctuary of the dressing room is not recorded. What is recorded is that the partnership, of which Colin had contributed 154, had realised 411 runs in eight hours 20 minutes. It is still England’s highest-ever stand for any wicket and remains a monument to both batsmen’s concentration and stamina.
Godfrey Evans came in and tonked a breezy 29 before the declaration came, 583/4, May 285 not out, the highest score by an England captain, a record that stood until Graham Gooch hit 333 against India in 1992.
What of the disconsolate West Indian bowlers? A discreet veil shall be drawn across their figures but one statistic stood out like a sore thumb (or should I say sore finger, because Ramadhin’s fingers were red raw). He had bowled 98 overs, poor fellow. I repeat, 98 overs! He had sent down more balls in a single innings, first-class or Test, than anybody had ever done before, or has ever done since. Thereafter, he was all washed up and finished as a Test match bowler. His mystery had been revealed, his aura punctured, his effectiveness blunted and he was never the same force again. The match was drawn but West Indian spirits had been broken. England won the rubber comfortably 3-0.
There was a humorous little postscript to Colin’s recollections of the series, one that betrays his humanity and humility. In the final Test, in England’s only innings, he failed to pick Ramadhin’s leg break and was bowled for two. ‘I was aiming to hit it through midwicket when it knocked back the off stump. On the way back to the pavilion, I passed the bowler and remarked, “He who laughs last, laughs loudest.”’
There was no MCC tour that winter, which was a pity because Colin was in prime form and it meant a return to the Lewisham store and a renewal of his association with Captain Peacock. Not that he would have complained. He was fully aware of his obligations to his father-in-law and was no doubt a dutiful employee.
The phone calls to his friend, Derek Ufton, for a congenial coffee, showed no signs of abating, according to Charlton’s captain and centre-half. For both of them, the beginning of the cricket season could not come soon enough, Cowdrey because the lure of the retail trade did not match that of leather on willow and Ufton because he was getting fed up with being injured and believed the grass at Canterbury might be softer on his dislocated shoulders than the hard ground at The Valley.
Regrettably for the English cricketing public, it was only the New Zealanders touring. I say only New Zealand, fully aware of the patronising tone of the comment but it is true that a weak and inexperienced team were outclassed in the Tests. Colin felt sorry for them, recognising that they really only had one player in their ranks, the captain, John Reid, worthy of international status. So one-sided had the contest become that there was popular clamour for the selectors to rest one or two of the established England players to try out some new blood.
Colin was asked to step down for the fourth Test and acceded to the request with characteristic good grace. He publicly stated that ‘the selectors’ decision was sensible and justified’; in private, I bet he slammed shut the lid of his cricket case with rather more force than usual.
The decks were being cleared, in any event, for the MCC tour of Australia that winter of 1958/59. By the decks, I refer of course to those of SS Iberia, the finest of P&O’s fleet, entrusted with the precious cargo of experienced English cricketers. She was not a lucky ship. Unfortunate mishaps, collisions with other ships, frequent mechanical breakdowns and constant fuel leaks meant she was taken out of service and broken up long before her expected service had elapsed. The same could be said of the England side. They were comprehensively beaten 4-0 by the Aussies and the team was dismantled.
The strange thing was that nobody saw it coming. The party on board was considered by pundits and public alike to be one of the strongest ever to leave these shores. The 1950s had been a decade of almost uninterrupted success for England and there seemed no reason to believe that it would end anytime soon. ‘Don’t forget, we had won the Ashes three times on the trot,’ Tom Graveney reminded me, ‘and the Aussies were a pretty good side then.’ So, what went wrong?
Colin confessed to one or two concerns before they left England but in no way could they be considered to be more than that, little niggles, hardly intimations of catastrophe. May was captain and there would have been not a single voice raised in opposition to that; his role as leader was firmly established and not open to question. Colin, however, was made vice-captain, a sure sign of the train of thought in the selectors’ minds as to who was going to succeed May when the time came. In the same way that Colin had been openly groomed for the captaincy at Kent from a very early stage, it was plain to all that he was seen as May’s natural successor. But the man himself wasn’t so sure; he felt the deputy’s job had come a little too early. There were more experienced and independently minded players in the team, Trevor Bailey being the most noticeable, who might have had other ideas.
On Hutton’s tour of 1954/55, Colin had first got to know Bailey. It took a while, for Bailey was by then an experienced campaigner and Colin was the youngest of the side. Their relationship, which was to flourish and endure up to the time of Colin’s death, started in the slips. In fact, Colin attributes his burgeoning reputation as a reliable slipper to Bailey. ‘On that tour,’ he wrote, ‘fielding next to him, I took an early lesson in concentration.’
At first, not a word was spoken between the pair, Colin very much aware of his junior status. ‘Once or twice, I glanced across at him to find his face in a frown, hand on chin, eyes disappearing behind the wrinkled eyebrows. Constantly he was muttering to himself. Once or twice an over, he’d double up in pain.’ Alarmed, thinking he might be ill, he asked Bailey if all was well. A groan would emanate from the senior man and a stream of colourful epithets would drop from his lips, berating the inaccurate bowling or the inexplicable field placing. ‘Whereas I was quite happy to enjoy the view, concentrating on the catch if it came my way,’ Colin wrote in his notes, ‘for him, every ball had its own life story.’
The point was that Bailey was not content to wait for the ball to come to him, he willed it, so that he could shape the course of the match in his image. He could not tolerate defeat. His commitment to England’s cause had already been sealed in the public’s consciousness during the Ashes series of 1953. In the second Test at Lord’s, he and Willie Watson had shared probably the most famous of rearguard actions in a fifth-wicket stand of four hours for 71 runs, thus enabling England to escape with a draw and fight another day. And again, during the fourth Test. To stave off an Australian breakthrough, Bailey batted for 262 minutes, scoring 38, earning himself the sobriquet of ‘Barnacle Bailey’.
Still he wasn’t finished. In the same match, with Australia apparently cruising to victory, he seized the ball, operated off his longest run and bowled consistently wide down the leg side. His tactics hijacked a draw but irritated the hell out of the Australians. He rather enjoyed that. Although not cut from the same ruthless cloth, Colin admired his dogged determination to do whatever it took to gain the upper hand. ‘Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate on every ball, whether you’re batting, bowling or fielding – that was how he made his mark,’ he wrote. ‘His tenacity and great involvement in the game as much as his ability made him, in my view a most underrated all-round England Test player.’
Of course, his team-mates found this tightly wound coil of intensity rather amusing at times. ‘We would watch him and smile at his antics,’ said Colin, ‘the way his face would be an open book. Occasionally, one or two would wind him up, commenting on the glorious strokeplay of this or that batsman. Trevor would explode in indignation, blaming the bowler, wondering how on earth this chap had managed to fox the selectors. Then that bowler would get a wicket and Trevor would say, grudgingly, that’s more like it, that’s why you were picked.’ For all his quirks and mannerisms, Bailey was greatly admired for his commitment to the cause and had been a mainstay of the England team for a decade.
But could he be relied upon for significant contributions with the bat, now he was in the twilight of his career? Furthermore, looking down at the list of batsmen, Colin privately wondered where the runs were going to come from, should he and May ever come up short. In this, he was proved to be remarkably prophetic. But he did not dwell on these negative thoughts. He firmly believed, as did everybody else, that no team could live with England’s bowling attack. And when you look at the depth of talent available, you would have been hard-pressed to disagree. Tyson, Loader, Trueman, Statham and Bailey were the quick bowlers, Laker, Lock and the untested Mortimore the spinners. The names alone should have sent a shiver down Australian spines.
However, Australian spines are not prone to shiver, especially when the Ashes are at stake. There were many reasons advanced for the unforeseen debacle but the obvious one was that Australia played the better cricket and were, despite predictions to the contrary, the more resourceful side. Yet the abject capitulation by the Englishmen rankled and the rasping note back home was the sound of knives being sharpened.
What did the players think? Peter Richardson made this observation to me, ‘We were not a team. We’d been together for too long and frankly we’d all got fed up with each other’s company.’ Tom Graveney put it even more darkly, ‘It wasn’t a happy team. I can truthfully say it was the most disappointing and depressing tour I’ve ever been on.’ Arthur Milton, whose first tour this was, and his last, said this of his experience, ‘I don’t think the management seemed a real part of the team.’
The vice-captain is part of the management team. Was Colin apart from the team in any way? Graveney blamed neither the captain nor his deputy. His criticism was levelled at Freddie Brown, their manager. Brown was hugely popular in Australia. He had led an MCC side severely weakened by war and its aftermath to that country in 1951/52 and had gained many friends for his cheerful and never-say-die attitude in the face of insuperable odds. ‘Cabbages – large as Freddie Brown’s heart,’ shouted vendors at markets. But now, six years later, it wasn’t Brown’s heart that worried Graveney and others but his liver. It was clear to everybody that he had a drink problem. ‘He was worse for wear most of the time,’ Graveney said, ‘Halfway through the tour, he had to be sent off somewhere for a fortnight to dry out.’
Colin was naturally reticent about what went on off the field but he knew that things would have to change the next time MCC went on tour. In the same way that an elected leader of a political party, or a chairman of a company or a headmaster of a school is invariably the polar opposite of his predecessor, the next manager of an overseas tour was going to be a totally different kettle of fish. In this regard, Colin was not wrong. We have to read between the lines to guess whether the appointment met with his wholehearted approval.
He was quick to defend, both publicly and privately, his great friend and captain when he came under what he thought was undue criticism. Some of May’s decisions, both in selection and team tactics, aroused fierce censure because it was felt that his largely unimaginative and defensive approach compared unfavourably with that of his Australian counterpart, Richie Benaud. Colin saw it differently. ‘Peter was carrying a larger burden of criticism than usual by this time,’ he wrote, ‘and I felt it was unfair. There was little different that I would, or could, have done if I had been in charge.’
For an independent viewpoint, who better to quiz than the doyen of cricket reporters, John Woodcock? ‘Peter May was no natural leader, like Benaud was,’ he explained. ‘His team greatly respected him for the very fine player he was and his position as leader was unassailable. But he was not a communicator. He was a very private man. What a shame he finished so soon, too soon. He would have made 100 hundreds if he hadn’t retired early. I think he got fed up with the limelight and the press intrusion.’
And Colin would have been seen, not least by himself, as his natural successor? ‘I think so, yes. That is why it was such a crushing disappointment for him to be continually overlooked.’ There was that famous photo of May with his wife beside the pool, as if that was a damning symbol of the whole tour. He sighed. ‘There were press men around, sniffing about for a story, looking for scapegoats. “Wives On Tour” I think was the unfavourable headline.’ He didn’t say as much but I was left with the distinct impression that Woodcock disapproved of sensationalised reporting. ‘There were a few high jinks,’ was as much as he would divulge, ‘but what tour doesn’t have its lively characters? No, we lost because complacency had set in and we didn’t perform as well as we should.’
Colin was incensed by the treatment his friend was getting. ‘The photo implied that Peter was aloof from his team. In fact, no captain took more care over his team than Peter and he was justifiably hurt.’ Clearly, captain and vice-captain, despite their firm friendship, were quite different personalities, one quiet, withdrawn, wary, uncommunicative and the other affable, sympathetic, forthcoming and full of bonhomie, but in the manner in which they put themselves at the service of their team, they were remarkably similar. It’s just that May hid his insecurities better than Colin.
Today, the ill-fated tour is more remembered for the throwing controversy than May’s sunbathing companion. By throwing I mean not the throwing of matches, a current blight on the game, but the throwing in matches.
‘There was undoubtedly a lot of it around,’ Woodcock agreed, ‘so much so that it was threatening to get out of hand.’ Who were the worst offenders? His faced creased into a grin, as if, even now, he could scarcely believe it. ‘I remember Colin getting bowled by Jim Burke, the off-spinner. There is a photo somewhere of it, the look of surprise on Colin’s face as he’s bowled by someone who has the pose as if he’s just scored a double top at darts!’
Burke was the least of the tourists’ problems. He was a part-time spinner. Of much more menace were the quick ‘chuckers’, as they were known – Ken Slater, Gordon Rorke and Ian Meckiff. To give you a taste of what it was like to face a quick bowler with a jerky action, let me repeat Tom Graveney’s description of facing Rorke, ‘He ran in and from 18 yards, because of his exaggerated drag, he’d suddenly stand upright, all six foot four of him, and throw it at you.’
Meckiff was even more alarming. He was left-arm over and thus more difficult to pick up because of the angle of approach and the fact that his left arm was hidden from view until the last moment. Things had come to a head by the time of the second Test in Melbourne. The tourists had come across Meckiff in one of the state warm-up games and though his action had raised eyebrows, he had been far too wild and erratic for anybody to lose sleep over him. In fact, they didn’t expect him to be considered for the Test team. ‘Hmmm,’ Woodcock chuckled. ‘He was obviously keeping his powder dry because come the first Test, he was a different bowler. Or thrower, should I say.’
By the time of the second Test, England were 1-0 down and rumblings about Meckiff had become louder and more insistent. ‘Chuckiff’, he was now known as in the England camp. Their worst fears were soon realised. In the second innings, they were bowled out for 87, Meckiff taking 6-38.
Colin’s analysis of Meckiff’s action is, as you would expect, measured and downplayed. ‘Whether he threw or not is not for me to say but there was something about the jerk with which his hand came over that made it difficult to see the ball until late. With most bowlers you know roughly where it is coming from and to some extent anticipate where the ball will go. There was a snatch about Meckiff’s delivery that made you so much later in deciding which shot had to be played. This meant you were virtually playing someone twice as quick.’
Twice as quick! Never mind Colin’s diplomatic use of the term ‘snatch’. It seemed clear that Meckiff threw his thunderbolts. ‘The sad thing about it all,’ continued Woodcock, ‘was that Ian Meckiff was such a nice man, a really delightful fellow. But I suppose we mustn’t feel too sorry for him. He had been getting away with it for years. Throwing was rife in Australia. There were a couple of bowlers in the South Australian side... their names were Hitchcock and Trethewey. We called them Pitchcock and Trethrowy!’
But there were others dotted around the globe? We went through a quick list of suspected throwers at the time: Geoff Griffin, Roy Gilchrist, Charlie Griffith, Harold Rhodes. ‘And Peter Loader, don’t forget, who was on our side. Let me tell you a story. It happened during this tour.’
The uproar over throwing had reached such a pitch that both cricket boards in Australia and England had been drawn into it. Don Bradman, as a selector and soon to be appointed chairman, had his own views and he was not slow to express them. ‘The problem is the most complex I have known in cricket because it is not a matter of fact but of opinion,’ he publicly stated. To this end and in an attempt to quell the growing stridency of the debate, especially in the English press, he invited the team along to his house in Bowral in New South Wales.
‘He had set up a small movie theatre,’ continued Woodcock, ‘and he showed a film to the boys, incorporating clips of film and newsreel of bowlers with suspect actions. Tony Lock included. To be fair to Lock, he was horrified when he saw his action in slow motion and he went back home determined to sort it out and re-model it. But it was a salutary lesson to us all. It wasn’t just an Australian problem. Anyway, next year, Bradman came to England and with Gubby Allen, they started moves to get bowlers with illegal actions banned.’
That is until the appearance of Muralitharan 30 years later. My informant either did not hear, or affected not to hear, my comment. Perhaps the last word on the throwing controversy of this tour ought to be left to a former team-mate of Bradman’s and by then a trenchant observer of the game in a newspaper column, Jack Fingleton. He brought out a book about the tour, titled Four Chuckas To Australia.
No tour is entirely devoid of its happier moments, even if the loss of the Ashes is a heavy burden to bear. Colin was quite right to think that he and May would have to shoulder the batting; the two of them were the only ones to average over 40 in the Tests. There were two stands when Colin believed they were both batting at their very best.
The second Test, at a packed MCG, started in dramatic fashion. Davidson removed Richardson, Watson and Graveney in a single over and England were 7/3. You might say that, by now, Colin Cowdrey was well used to walking out to bat in a crisis but this was different, as he described. ‘On no other ground in the world can disaster strike more frighteningly than at Melbourne, where the dressing rooms are deep in the giant stands, the crowd larger than anywhere else and the din more deafening. When the first wicket fell that morning, the shuddering and clattering seemed to announce the end of the world. By the time the third wicket fell, it was like nothing I had ever heard before.’
When the fourth wicket fell, Colin made his way to the middle amid the cacophony of sound, there to be met by May. They had difficulty in hearing each other speak. No matter. There was no need for words. The match had barely started but was already in the balance. The series, the Ashes, the whole tour was on a knife-edge, the captain was under attack, his selections criticised and his captaincy doubted. The pressure was enormous.
But May batted as if he were facing no more than an average county attack on his home turf at The Oval. Cowdrey played almost as well and there can be no higher praise than that. Colin found the whole experience strangely exhilarating, as a batsman does when he is in form and dominating the bowling. They were parted the next day, having put on 118 runs. Colin was out for 44 and May completed a memorable century, one of his very best. ‘Somehow,’ Colin wrote, ‘I felt that Peter and I had reached a peak that day.’ All to no avail, however. From 210/4, England collapsed to 259 all out and in the second innings, they were bowled out by Meckiff for 87, to lose the match by eight wickets and effectively the Ashes.
There was another highlight for Colin in the third drawn Test, when he scored ‘his customary hundred in Australia’ as Woodcock wryly put it. He was the leading partner this time in another long stand with his captain, this time for 182, before the declaration came immediately he had reached three figures. The match was drawn, there was no way back and the least said about the comprehensive defeats in Test matches four and five the better.
One further point I wanted to clear up before this unhappy tour is consigned to history was the standard of umpiring, which had come in for a fair bit of stick from some of the England players. John Woodcock laughed hollowly when I brought this up. ‘In 1954/55, when we won, the umpiring was considered to be the best in the world. In 1958/59, when we lost, everybody said it was the worst they’d ever seen. And do you know what? They were the same umpires!’ No need to check his facts. But I did. And of course he was right. Messrs McInnes, Hoy and Wright were ever present.
Only two quick points need to be made about the summer of 1959. India were outclassed and had the unfortunate distinction of becoming the first Test nation to lose a series 5-0. And Colin Cowdrey had his first taste of international captaincy. Peter May had not retired, he had fallen ill and Colin deputised for the last two matches. The salient word here is ‘deputised’; it was no permanent appointment. Not yet.
Some time during the season, May sidled up to Colin with the news, not wholly unexpected, that the manager for the forthcoming winter tour to the West Indies was going to be Walter Robins. The post-mortem at Lord’s into the disastrous Ashes campaign had come to the conclusion that the laissez-faire tone and character of England’s approach to their cricket was entirely inappropriate in this day and age. What was required was a more professional and disciplined regime.
To this end, MCC appointed the noted authoritarian Robins to take control of the side. Robins was a ‘considerable figure in the game’, Woodcock pointed out to me. ‘He played football for Nottingham Forest, played for Middlesex and captained them to the county championship in 1947. He captained England before the war. He was a powerful and forceful personality. Some of the players were a bit frightened of him.’
I doubt that Peter and Colin were among that number but both had their reservations about the man. Or not so much the man – they recognised his dynamism and aura – but the way he was bound to try and run things. ‘It was Walter’s way or the highway,’ noted Woodcock, ‘he would brook no opposition.’ The trouble was that May had been used to doing it his way and from the outset had his work cut out to maintain that authority. Colin, as his vice-captain (he had been restored to that position), did not operate at his most effective in the teeth of discord.
Of Robins, I will only say this. In the course of protracted conversations with George Chesterton, during the writing of his biography, he told me about an MCC tour to Canada in 1954 he had been on, captained by Robins. George was a mild-mannered man, not given to slinging mud, but he was deeply disparaging about Robins’s man-management skills. ‘We went on strike, you know,’ he told me. ‘We were a bunch of cricketing-schoolmasters, unpaid, who had given up our holidays to go on a goodwill tour for the MCC to one of its cricketing outposts and he treated us like squaddies. Naughty boy nets and curfews and physical training! Can you believe it? More like a boot camp than a cricket tour. He had to eventually, how shall I put it, moderate his approach. But he wasn’t happy about it.’
The thing was that George and his fellow tourists were amateurs and therefore not beholden to their captain. May and Cowdrey were amateurs too but their situation was different. These were Test matches and the West Indies was no cricketing outpost. Colin smelt trouble.
Troubles come not in single spies but in battalions, as we know. How much May’s illness, which had been troubling him for some time but now struck with a vengeance, was brought on, or exacerbated, by the cares of captaincy, not helped by an overbearing manager, we shall never know. His form was patchy and when Colin discovered the nature of his indisposition, all fell into place.
Yet, for some time, the truth had been hidden. The first Test, a high-scoring game, had been drawn. Against the odds, England had won the second Test, thanks largely to their now well-established opening pair of fast bowlers, Trueman and Statham, who had reduced the home side to 112 all out in their first innings. It was when the West Indies were 98/8 that the bottles began to fly. It was not long before a full-scale riot among the 30,000 crowd broke out and play had to be abandoned for the day. The mood was considerably more subdued as England went on to secure their victory by the huge margin of 256 runs.
But what was wrong with May? The official explanation was vague and the press were uncharacteristically discreet about the ailment and I, and all other England supporters back home, were told, with heroic delicacy, that it was ‘an internal wound that refused to heal’. Other than that, we were left pretty much in the dark.
‘Haemorrhoids!’ Woodcock told me much, much later. ‘The most extraordinary thing was that May kept it quiet from both his vice-captain and his manager.’ Do you mean to say that even Colin, his best friend on tour, was unaware of the problem? ‘Every evening, after play, Peter would go to the local hospital to have the wound dressed and he told no one.’ Eventually, the problem became so acute that May was forced to return home. For the last two Tests, Colin was in charge. Again. But only holding the fort temporarily, until his stricken general could return to active service.
His relationship with his manager, though cordial on the surface – with Colin, it could hardly have been anything else – was uneasy. He did not have the authority, nor the iron will, of the departed captain and felt beleaguered and exposed. Furthermore, he had been asked – and it was a brave man to say no to Robins – to open, again, and he had reluctantly agreed. For the good of the side, again.
He tried to put aside these two perennial banes of his international career, opening and captaincy, and concentrate on finishing what May had started. They had seized the upper hand from their fancied opponents and he was damned if he was going to relinquish it. This required steadfastness in the face of a West Indian side stung by their humbling who fought back in the only way they know how, with a barrage of short-pitched bowling. Hall and Watson, later joined by Griffith, were at their most fearsome and Colin, as captain and opening the batting, was their target. Literally. He said that he had never been so bruised and battered in his career. His bravery was never in doubt.
His innings of 114 and 97 in the third Test, 65 and 27 in the fourth and 119 in the fifth were of the highest class and led the way for his team to eke out the three draws required to win the series. ‘There you are, I said you were an opener,’ Robins told him. Perhaps. But that wasn’t really the point. Surely England’s best batsman, now that May was gone, ought to bat where he feels most comfortable.
Colin’s written account of the aftermath of the tour says it all really, ‘Significantly, and on the strength of our victory in the West Indies, Robins was soon to become chairman of England selectors. Although I led England to victory in the series against South Africa the following summer, Dexter was the next England captain to tour Australia.’
Colin did indeed captain England for the five Tests against South Africa in 1960 but he was not, and did not consider himself to be, England’s captain. Peter May was still indisposed and Colin was keeping his seat warm. He had no problem with that; it was what vice-captains do.
The series is best remembered these days for a highly dramatic, controversial and, looking back on it, very sad incident in the second Test at Lord’s. Given the brouhaha over throwing on the recent MCC tour of Australia, what happened was an accident waiting to happen and could, and probably should, have been avoided. Geoff Griffin had been no-balled for throwing during the previous domestic season in South Africa but in spite of this, and in the face of the growing international disquiet, he had been picked for the tour of England.
Gubby Allen, chairman of MCC’s cricket committee, had been to the forefront in the battle by the authorities to rid the game of this scourge; how much Don Bradman, by now the chairman of Australia’s Board of Control, was behind him at this time remains a moot point. The two did meet, not long afterwards, and both agreed on a common policy on how best to tackle, and outlaw, this menace. What is certain is that England took the lead here and umpires were instructed that season to enforce the law on illegal actions. Which they did, with a vengeance.
Griffin was no-balled on several occasions in the warm-up county games but was picked for the first Test, during which he apparently passed muster because he was not no-balled in either innings, despite the deep misgivings of the England batsmen, Colin included.
That was to change in the second Test at Lord’s. It just had to be Lord’s, didn’t it, cricket’s headquarters and the spiritual home of the game. Frank Lee and Syd Bullar, both respected senior umpires, no-balled Griffin, five times in the first innings and six times in the second. Even from this distance, we can sympathise with the poor fellow; he must have felt that his world was crumbling around him.
Then an extraordinary thing happened. Returning for his third spell, he removed M.J.K. Smith, Peter Walker and Fred Trueman in successive deliveries, thus becoming the first South African to take a hat-trick in a Test match. Nonetheless, there was no disguising the fact that the match was a disaster, for him and his team – they lost by an innings and 73 runs.
But that was not the end of it. Because the match had been completed within three days and the Queen was due to arrive at tea-time to be presented to the players, both teams were instructed to go out there and play an exhibition match. I know of no professional player, either current or past, who does not have the utmost contempt for exhibition matches. Colin was no exception. If there is nothing to play for, if the result is immaterial, if there is no contest involved, what is the point? However, go through the motions is what they had to do and go through the motions is what they did.
Except the umpires. They took it seriously, very seriously. Griffin was no-balled repeatedly, such that he was forced to bowl underarm in order to complete the over. To add insult to injury, he was then no-balled again, for not informing the umpire of his change of action. That was cruel and totally unnecessary. Far better for him to have been allowed to complete the match (in point of fact, the match had already been completed) and to disappear into the sanctuary of the pavilion, there to have his future decided behind closed doors, not in the full glare of public scrutiny.
Although he was allowed to stay on the tour and play solely as a batsman, his international career was finished. Colin’s reaction was one of sympathy but he felt powerless to intervene. Griffin wasn’t in his team and he wasn’t responsible for what he did on the field of play. His concern, as you would expect from a compassionate man, was ‘that it was an embarrassment that he had been picked at all ’.
As for the cricket, Colin was satisfied with his team’s 3-0 success and pleased that his form returned in the last two Tests, including a masterful 155 at The Oval. The fact that The Oval was half-empty at the time worried him, not so much that the England supporters were missing a gem but that this series had failed to ignite the public’s interest. Weak opposition and a rubber long since decided might have had something to do with it but the debate in the press and in the corridors of power was more about the moribund state of Test match cricket. Slow play, in other words, slow over rates and slow scoring, seemed to be strangling the game and there were those who seriously worried for its future. Among the strident apostles of ‘brighter cricket’ was England’s chairman of selectors, Walter Robins. He turned a sceptical eye on the stand-in England captain and wondered.
There was no tour that winter so, once again, it was back to Lewisham and Chiesmans Ltd. Captain Peacock had now been spared the irksome duty of trying to instruct his tepid recruit, Colin having been, as it were, kicked upstairs, where he was introduced to the wider concept of selling, in other words, how to grow a business and make a profit. He said that becoming aware of the changing nature of large, family-run retail stores, such as this one, made a deep impression on him. My guess is that what he learnt, and what he stored away for future reference, was that running a business was not a lot different from captaining a team.
‘The key to success,’ he later wrote, ‘is wrapped up in the ability or inability to solve essential human problems.’ That, I believe, was at the core of his leadership style. Say what you like about his disinclination at times to make a decision or his essentially cautious tactical approach, nobody can gainsay the solicitude for the welfare of the teams he captained.
But come what May. Everybody expected the incumbent England captain to return for the Ashes series of 1961. May himself wasn’t so sure. Privately (he only admitted this to Colin many years later) he wanted no more of it but publicly he bowed to pressure from Lord’s and had made himself available. Not quite yet, however. He did not play in the first Test but felt unready to resume the captaincy when he did return to the side for the second Test at Lord’s. Colin, having led the side for the first Test, was surprised to be asked to do it again for the second.
He was disconcerted at being informed so late in the day, not having done his usual homework as captain for a Test match but at least he was relieved that he was no longer being expected to open, England having settled upon the solid partnership of Geoff Pullar and Raman Subba Row. England had drawn the first Test, despite being well behind on the first innings. They were saved any embarrassment by a magnificent 180 from Ted Dexter, ably supported by a century from Subba Row.
At this point, it is as well for us to pause and take stock of Dexter the player, if for no other good reason that Colin, in his notes, does the very same thing. Several paragraphs are devoted to the man who was to become his rival but always his good friend.
‘Ted Dexter was without doubt the most talented all-round games player I have ever met,’ he wrote. He remembered when he was at Oxford practising on the rackets courts at nearby Radley College and playing with the young Dexter and immediately coming to the conclusion that he must be one of the best schoolboy players in the country. The professional at the school agreed. So good was Dexter at all games, he said, that it was the devil’s own job to get him on court. ‘Ted was superbly built,’ Colin went on. ‘Six foot tall, immensely strong and quick over the ground. He was a good 100- or 200-yard sprinter, fine centre at rugby and good at football. At tennis, rackets, squash, golf and of course cricket, he had the ability to strike the ball better than anyone else on earth.’
Dexter’s prowess at golf is well known; there are some who believe he could have made a name for himself in that game had he not chosen cricket. Colin gives an interesting insight into this theory. While on tour in Australia, somehow or other, Dexter had arranged a foursome in Adelaide with Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Norman Von Nida, on the day before the Australian Open. Colin pulled Dexter’s trolley that day, accompanied by several of their attentive team-mates. ‘On the way round, I whispered to Norman, “Come on then, how good is Ted really?” He answered that he was the best striker of the ball to come out of England since Henry Cotton.’ As it happened, Colin believed that Dexter did not play as well as he could in that round, notwithstanding the fact that ‘he pulled off a number of dramatic iron shots’.
Afterwards, the three golf professionals encouraged Dexter to lay aside his cricket career to try his hand on the American circuit. ‘Of course he didn’t,’ Colin tells us, the relief in his voice almost tangible, ‘but it must have been an attractive financial proposition.’ Dexter was an amateur, we must not forget. Did he ever regret his decision? Colin remained none the wiser. ‘Ted was such a philosophical fellow that we never knew his true feelings. He was not one to look back and be bowed down by might-have-beens. He was always able to pull a veil over the things of yesterday and prepare to make the best of tomorrow.’ Len Hutton always said of Wally Hammond, ‘Invent a new game today and he will have mastered it tomorrow.’ Colin had the same opinion of Dexter. ‘If only I had one quarter of his talent,’ is his final observation. Lament, you might call it.
Colin had been out of luck in the first Test, scoring 13 and 14, but he felt he was in good nick and came into the Lord’s match on the back of a couple of hundreds for Kent. May was now fit and ready to return. But not as captain. The thinking was that it would be better for him to ease his way back into Test cricket without being burdened with the cares and responsibilities of the captaincy. So Kipper, be a good sport and hold the fort for a bit longer, will you, there’s a good chap. What else could he say?
On later reflection, he believed his acquiescence, always immediate, always unconditional, did him no favours on this occasion. ‘This was the Test in which I should have clinched the captaincy for years to come,’ he wrote. ‘Had the Lord’s Test taken a different pattern, I think I might have begun a long reign of leadership and so avoided the many rumpuses and embarrassments of the next few years.’
Not a few of which disappointments were his own. But the match was a disaster; England lost a game they were expected to win. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. He misread the pitch, not the first captain ever to have done that, but it meant that England played two spinners and Australia none, on a surface better suited to their battery of four seamers. England batsmen played and nicked, Australian batmen played and missed. England’s batting collapses in both innings were inexplicable. Colin scored 16 and 7 when he felt that he could, and should, have scored a hundred. And there were times when it seemed every decision he made, in the field or back in the dressing room, backfired. It was a calamitous performance. England had lost by five wickets. ‘That Saturday was the blackest day of my life.’
Had they won, or even drawn creditably, he remained convinced to his dying day that Peter May would, there and then, gladly have handed over the reins and the Cowdrey reign would have commenced.
Instead, the knives were out. Colin was sacked as captain and May reinstated. He was not led into the headmaster’s study and summarily expelled but let down ‘gently’ as he called it. But let down he was. Thereafter ensued a decade of ‘captaincy merry-go-round’, as the press labelled it. I prefer to call it more of a beauty pageant, with all its attendant embarrassments, as one by one the contenders were led out to face public scrutiny. All were worthy aspirants, all had their strengths and all had their supporters, either in the press or behind closed committee room doors.
Always Colin was in the wings and sometimes he was in the spotlight, hating the frenzy and the hoopla but privately believing the crown should be his. At one time or another, his rivals were Ted Dexter, David Sheppard, Mike Smith, Brian Close and Ray Illingworth, all of whom were team-mates and all of whom he had the greatest regard for personally (with the possible exception of the last named). In the meantime, there were runs to be scored and Tests to be played.
This Ashes series was lost, in one disastrous session, if folklore is to be believed. This was at Old Trafford, when Dexter was leading the charge for victory, batting imperiously as only he could, before Richie Benaud, the Australian captain, gambled by bowling his leg-spinners around the wicket and into the rough. Dexter was dismissed for 76, May was bowled around his legs for a duck, England collapsed to 201 all out, losing the match and the Ashes, with Benaud taking 5-12 in 25 deliveries. In such a manner are legends born. Benaud was a genius, May a general lacking inspiration.
It left a deep scar on the England psyche. For May, it was the end. He retired from Test cricket following the final Test at The Oval and a great batsman and a very fine captain was lost to the game. Incidentally, Colin was ill and did not play in this momentous encounter. He returned at The Oval but scored 0 and 3, to round off a thoroughly disappointing season. One for which he had had the highest hopes.
The demeaning beauty pageant continued during the following season, with the captaincy for the series against Pakistan passing from Dexter to Cowdrey and back to Dexter. Furthermore, appearing like an Old Testament prophet out of the desert, strode the imposing figure of the Rev. David Sheppard. What a twist of the tale this provided for the newshounds.
Sheppard had been persuaded temporarily to lay aside his ministry – in which great things were expected of him – in order to resurrect his cricket career, with a view to leading the MCC side to Australia that winter. Thus the three of them were thrust on to the stage and the judges eyed them critically. Ironically, Colin was in magnificent form against the Pakistanis, scoring 159 in the first Test and 182 in the fifth.
Even more ironically, he had again been asked to open, the dependable Subba Row, like May, having retired from the game early. A further irony was provided by the fact that in the fifth Test at The Oval, he opened the batting with Sheppard. They put on a stand of 117. Say what you like about the vexed problem of Colin’s disinclination to open; he was the most technically correct batsman in England and a good fit for the role, he always gave of his best and he played some splendid innings there.
Colin believed he was third favourite for the Australia job. The press had their money on Sheppard. Colin believed that Dexter was a shoo-in. After some unnecessary diversionary tactics from the chairman of selectors, Walter Robins, the announcement was made. Colin was right. Dexter was named as captain, Cowdrey as his vice-captain and Sheppard as an opener. The confidence Colin had in his instincts was born out of a shrewd awareness of Robins’s agenda. In a nutshell, it was encapsulated in the catchphrase ‘brighter cricket’.
Robins had a point here. Following the upsurge in public interest in the game after the Second World War, enthusiasm seemed to be waning. Test cricket had become stale and defensively minded. Most Tests were drawn and the game seemed to be stagnating. The riveting series between Australia and the West Indies in the previous winter (which included the famous tied Test) had shown the way and Robins was eager that English cricket should follow suit. To that end, he favoured the fearless, swashbuckling, cavalier Ted Dexter rather than the more orthodox, dare one say cautious, Colin Cowdrey.
What Colin thought of the appointment is difficult to tell; rarely did he confide his inner feelings with anybody. Usually, he trod the diplomatic path. Were there any clues in his notes? Interestingly, he writes about Dexter more than any other cricketer, with the exception of Ranjitsinhji, both Sussex men, incidentally. Ranji had long since been dead; Dexter was very much alive (still is, of course). Colin’s assessment of Dexter’s personality is fair, balanced and affectionate. ‘So gifted is Ted in so many things,’ he writes, ‘he found it hard to give much time to people.’
There was an innate shyness about the man, he believed, that made it difficult to get to know him. He had this habit, when asked a question, as he frequently was by pressmen and commentators, of pondering his answer at length before giving a reply. ‘While doing this, he’d look upwards or away, scratching his nose as he sniffed, giving every impression of aloofness. It was totally unintended but unfortunate. This apparently leisurely and arrogant air gave rise to the nickname “Lord Ted”, which stuck.’
For all that, he was a deep thinker, not only about the game – and Colin later gives Dexter full credit for his quick understanding and effective execution of tactics of the new, limited-overs game – but about life too. Every sport he commented on was subjected to intense scrutiny of technique and strategy. Colin asks the hypothetical question, was Dexter too much of a theorist? He gives no definitive answer, possibly fearful that the same question could be asked of him. Nonetheless, Dexter the theorist was ‘always in pursuit of the best’ and would display scant regard for anyone with inferior knowledge who had not made sufficient attempt to gain it.
‘I have not met anyone else in my life who has been able to shut his mind so single-mindedly to outside distraction. If only I could do the same,’ Colin finishes wistfully. You do wonder whether he was too hard on himself sometimes. Sadly, and frustratingly, at that point he breaks off, promising to come back to his audit of Dexter’s captaincy, but he never did. Death intervened.
Having gone with the maverick to lead the side on the field, who would the selectors choose as manager? ‘There’s no doubt that Dexter can handle a bat,’ Colin reported one of the selectors as saying, ‘but who’s going to handle Dexter?’ The answer to this Colin does give detailed appraisal, for reasons that shall, in due course, become obvious.
The appointment, when it was announced, astonished the cricketing world. Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, the 16th Duke of Norfolk and England’s Earl Marshall and senior duke of the realm, was no stranger to official posts but he was a novice, went up the cry, as a manager of a cricket team. Not quite so, as it happened. He had taken his own team on a tour of the West Indies, he had instigated the traditional pipe opener of the season for the tourists to play his team, the Duke of Norfolk’s XI, at his own ground in the family seat at Arundel Castle, he had been president of MCC and he loved his cricket.
Furthermore, he was president of Sussex and had been instrumental in appointing Dexter as club captain. In fact, the choice was an inspired one. After initial scepticism among the players (he caused considerable amusement at their first official function when he told them, ‘Gentlemen, I want this to be an entirely informal tour. You will merely address me as “Sir”.’), he won them over with his natural charm and courtesy and his evident love of the game and his desire to do his best for them. The Australians took to him; in the end, he had them eating out of his hand. ‘He was a lovely chap,’ Tom Graveney told me. ‘Utterly charming.’ And then he laughed, making a reference to the ‘Sussex Mafia’ on that tour and the fact that the duke, Dexter and Sheppard were all Sussex men. Even Fred Trueman was eventually won over and the two became good friends.
Colin, with his background, natural politeness and ease of manner, got on with him like a house on fire. ‘I admired the Duke of Norfolk most of all for the way he always sought to play second string to the captain yet was willing to take any of the load off his shoulders whenever it would help.’ Quite when and how the close relationship between the duke and player took hold is unclear but take hold it did.
In an effort to glean a little insight into their friendship, I asked Alan (A.C.) Smith, who was on that tour as the reserve, initially anyway, wicketkeeper-batsman, what his memories of the duke were. ‘First of all, you must appreciate that there were four amateurs in the party, Dexter, Sheppard, Cowdrey and me.’ I thought the distinction between amateurs and professionals had been abolished – that very summer, wasn’t it? ‘Actually the distinction was abolished during the tour, to take effect at the beginning of the next season, 1963. In fact, the barriers had been breaking down for some time before that. When on tour for England, there hadn’t really been any distinction at all. But socially, vestiges of the old class system still prevailed. For instance, the duke’s three daughters joined him later in the tour.
‘One day when we were in Melbourne, the duke announced he had theatre tickets for that evening’s performance and needed two more escorts to accompany his daughters. Of course, it was expected that Colin and I should be the two escorts. We went out for dinner afterwards. It was a very pleasant evening.’ And then he started laughing. ‘Those girls – they were known as the Norfolk Broads!’
Another aspect of Colin’s temperament that Smith was eager to convey was his propensity for networking. Now, that word ‘networking’ often has unfavourable connotations, hinting at manufactured intimacy and self-serving social climbing. Of all the people I have spoken to about Colin’s extensive circle of friends in high places, none has ever intimated that he used their influence for his own purposes. What he enjoyed was putting people in touch with each other for their mutual benefit, not his. He loved matchmaking. Sometimes, personal advantage accrued but that was not the primary purpose.
Smith gave an involuntary whistle as he marvelled at the number of people Colin knew in Australia. ‘Mind you,’ he added wryly, ‘he did tour there six times.’ Everywhere they went, it seemed, Colin had friends and contacts. ‘He even organised cars for the boys. I got one and I was a junior member of the party. Yep, Kipper looked after me on that trip.’
He told me another story about the 1974/75 tour, on which he was an assistant manager. ‘Just before the Perth Test – Colin had only been in the country for two days – he said to me, “Come out this evening with me. We’re guests at Government House with the state governor.” He had a car ready and off we went to meet him. All I can remember was that the governor’s language was awful! Typical Aussie, really.’
Of course, MCC tours were not all about receptions and theatre visits. The serious business was the cricket and in this regard, the team’s mission statement, clearly articulated in press conferences before they set out, was two-fold – to win back the Ashes and to play ‘brighter cricket’. They failed on both counts. Dexter was magnificent with a bat in his hand, especially early on in the tour, but his reputation, together with that of his opposite number, Richie Benaud, as enterprising captains intent on playing attractive cricket, did not last the series. All this talk of positive intent was forgotten in the Tests, according to Wisden, ‘where victory, or rather the avoidance of defeat, became the all-important factor’.
The narrow margins between the sides could have provided an interesting tussle, one that should have gone down to the wire, but sadly, when all was set for a thrilling climax in the final Test at Sydney, with both sides locked at 1-1, ‘the game turned out to be the dullest and by far the worst of the five’. Which is saying something, for Wisden in conclusion gave this damning verdict, ‘Overall, much of the cricket was grim, especially the Tests.’ So much for brighter cricket.
And how was it for Colin, ‘the most stylish of the batsmen’, as Wisden described him? Not at all bad, as it transpired. He averaged 43.77 in the Tests, the highlight coming at Melbourne, his favourite ground, where he scored 113 and 58 not out, to help England to their solitary victory, by seven wickets. Another milestone was his 307 against New South Wales, which remained forever his highest score in first-class cricket (MCC 307 became his personal number plate on his Jaguar thereafter). ‘I would never have managed it without my old friend, Tom Graveney,’ he always said. ‘He was batting with me for most of the time and he kept on encouraging me towards the triple century, telling me that now was no time to lose concentration.’
One game that certainly was not grim was held at Canberra towards the end of the tour. Sir Robert Menzies, the Australian prime minister, was a cricket nut. Accordingly, he would assemble a Prime Minister’s XI to play the tourists and a swift glance at his team (including Cowper, Harvey, Benaud, Mackay, Grout and Loxton) indicated that MCC would not have taken them lightly. Nor did they, especially once the guest player was announced. Sir Don Bradman was enticed out of retirement, much against his better judgement, to lace on his boots and buckle on his pads once more.
A.C. Smith takes up the story. ‘There was huge public interest. The Don back at the crease! He came in at number five. Tom Graveney was bowling his leggies at the time. He hit Tom for a four past mid-on. The next over there was a single and Don was now facing Statham. I was keeping and I remember what happened very clearly. Obviously Statham was not going to let rip so I was standing, what, five yards back. Statham trundled in and delivered the ball at military medium, Don played back, the ball came off the face of the bat, on to his boot and rolled slowly on to the stumps and the bails fell off. It was agonising really.’
Tom Graveney chuckled as he recalled the incident. ‘I am the man off whom Sir Don Bradman scored his last runs!’ he announced proudly. Both men made the point that Colin and The Don knew each other well. Of course they did. I have ploughed through reams of letters from Bradman to Colin, mainly from their time as administrators of the game in their respective countries. Whatever their differences of opinions, the tone remained staunchly cordial, warm even.
‘Before we leave this tour,’ cried A.C. during our conversation, ‘what about the world record stand with Colin in New Zealand?’ I confessed my ignorance. He put me right. ‘It was the second Test at the Basin Reserve in Wellington. Colin had damaged his hand in the field so he came in down the order at number eight. I was batting at number ten. God knows why. F.S. Trueman went in before me at number nine!’
Having seen you bat, Alan, I should have thought that ten was about right. ‘I always knew I should never have sent my son to your school. Anyway, Colin was batting like a dream, despite his injured hand. And, though I say it myself, I wasn’t batting too badly either. We shared an unbroken ninth-wicket partnership of 163, a world record.’ It was indeed. And so remained until bettered by Asif Iqbal and Intikhab Alam at The Oval in 1967. Colin scored 128 and Smith 69 on that memorable day. All three Tests were comfortably won by England. New Zealand’s development as a Test nation had a while to go yet.
‘After that tour, I never played for England again,’ A.C. rather wistfully said. ‘As team-mates, Colin and I got on very well but I got to know him much better after we had retired.’ Retired from playing that is. As did Colin, A.C. Smith later became a significant figure in the administration of the game.
What better antidote to a drab series between the two Anglo-Saxon nations than the arrival on these shores in that spring of 1963 of those calypso cricketers from the Caribbean, with their compelling brand of enterprising cricket and their loud, colourful, exuberant supporters? Once more, hitherto half-filled grounds were packed to the rafters. England lost the first Test by ten wickets and it was imperative for the sake of the series that they fought back in the second at Lord’s. This they did, in a match that has gone down in the annals of the game as one of the most gripping, spellbinding ever played. Colin’s role in the final act is unforgettable.
West Indies were bowled out for 301 (Trueman 6-100), no mean feat by the home side, given the strength of their opponents’ batting. On the second day, with two early wickets in the bag, and with Hall and Griffith in full cry, they scented blood and circled their prey. In an innings which Colin described as one of the greatest seen at Lord’s, Dexter pushed them back, then contemptuously dismissed them. ‘Not only did his innings reflect completely his volatile nature and almost arrogant confidence, it also thrust England right back in the game,’ he wrote.
Dexter’s counter-attack caught the public imagination. Why, a whole book was even written about it (Alan Ross’s West Indies at Lord’s). I read it, hidden inside the covers of a large, dull tome on the British Constitution, in the school library during a history lesson. It made a huge impression on me too. Sadly, and this may have contributed to its enduring appeal, Dexter’s onslaught came to an end all too soon. Hall and Griffith were replaced and he was LBW to Sobers for 70. England’s total was a mere four runs in arrears.
On the Saturday, the queues were snaking around St John’s Wood long before the gates opened. Colin, captaining the side in the field in the absence of Dexter who had a sore knee, describes the scene, ‘I have played before crowds three times as huge in Melbourne but nowhere on earth do my stomach muscles tighten up a full hour before play as they do in this special place.’ Had it not been for a masterful 133 from Basil Butcher, England would have been home and dry. As it was, their target for victory was 234. Nip and tuck.
At this point in his notes, Colin breaks away to raise once more the contentious issue of throwing. The England players, while accepting that most of Griffith’s deliveries were legitimate, were certain that, when he strained for extra pace, ‘his action altered perceptibly and he could produce the most brutal, lethal delivery, fast yorkers or short-pitched bouncers’. The atmosphere in the home dressing room when he came on to bowl was always tense, sometimes acrimonious. They’d seen enough of it all on that tour of Australia in 1958/59 and the problem hadn’t gone away.
It wasn’t a chuck that did for Colin but ‘the ridge’. Officially, the ridge at Lord’s did not exist. Groundsmen, pitch inspectors, turf experts, geologists, surveyors, all came out strongly against the theory that there was a ridge that ran across the square, saying that it was a myth. No, it wasn’t. Ask any cricketer who played there. I hit it once, by accident. I bowled a rank long-hop and even at my gentle medium pace, the ball flew over the wicketkeeper’s head (he was standing up). Andy Roberts, who was at mid-off, doubled up with laughter.
When the ball flies off the ridge, delivered by the world’s fastest bowler at the time, Wes Hall, it is no laughing matter, as Colin found out to his cost. ‘He let loose two very nasty ones and then, by chance, pitched one only just short of a length. It reared straight up and would have struck me under the chin at full speed had I not flung up my left arm in an instinctive parry.’ The sound of the forearm breaking was sickening. As Colin had it set and plastered in hospital, he knew that his match and his season were over.
Or was it? Like the best of dramas, there was an unexpected twist to the plot. England’s advance on the winning total underwent so many alarms and excursions that even experienced onlookers in the pressroom were chewing their fingernails. This time, there were no fireworks from Dexter. The responsibilities lay heavy on the shoulders of Close and Barrington, as well as their arms, torso, knuckles and other parts of the body, as they were subjected to a barrage of short-pitched bowling from Hall and Griffith – in poor light, too.
Close, in particular, was hit frequently, never flinching, always ready for the next ball. Then he lost control of his senses, or so it seemed to the onrushing Hall. Close was walking down the wicket towards him, bat raised, face grimaced. So disconcerted was Hall that he aborted his run-up. But Close persisted with the tactic, giving Hall the charge, and if he wasn’t able to get his bat on the ball, he was quite content for it to thud painfully, but harmlessly, into his chest.
There was method in his madness, according to Colin. Far from losing his mind, Close was adopting a deliberate ploy in an attempt to disrupt Hall’s rhythm and induce him to lose length and direction. ‘It wasn’t a maniacal innings of blind courage,’ he asserted, ‘but a carefully premeditated assault.’ It may not have been the product of blind courage but it took courage all right. It so nearly succeeded too. The following day, the newspapers printed a picture of Close stripped to the waist; his torso was a patchwork of bruises, lesions, contusions and swellings. You could even see the outline of the ball’s seam on one purple mark. ‘It was, surely, Close’s finest hour,’ Colin said.
The match was always going to be a balance between runs to be scored and wickets to be taken. Now, on account of a delayed start to the final day because of rain, time entered the equation. Eventually Close’s incredible innings came to a close, caught Murray bowled Griffith for 70, and the maths were simple. England needed 15 to win, West Indies needed two wickets and there were 19 minutes left to play.
Back in the dressing room, Colin was padding up, with some help from team-mates. Dexter was adamant that his stricken batsman should not bat unless it was absolutely necessary to do so. As the minutes ticked by and England’s score advanced in singles, it became increasingly clear that he probably would. He started to practise batting one-handed in front of the mirror, with a left-handed stance. That was the only way he could keep his broken left arm out of the way.
The 6pm news on the BBC was put on hold as the nation sat round their television sets, transfixed by the live broadcast from Lord’s. Final over, to be bowled by Hall, eight to win, eight wickets down. Dot ball. Second ball, Shackleton dropped the ball at his feet and set off on a run. It became a race between bowler and non-striker, Allen, to reach the far end first. Allen won. Seven to win. Third ball. A yorker. Allen squeezed it to square leg for a single. Six to win, three balls left. Fourth ball. Shackleton swung and missed and already Allen was down at his end. Murray, the wicketkeeper, threw the ball to Worrell at short mid-on and, rather than risk a shy at the stumps, he took on Shackleton, both 38 by the way, for a race to the stumps. Worrell won, whipped off the bails and Shackleton was run out. Two balls left, nine wickets down, six runs to win. Lord’s held its breath and all eyes were turned to the pavilion. Surely that was it. England’s last batsman was hors de combat and they had lost.
Then that familiar, slightly stooped and portly figure slowly made its way down the pavilion steps, through the gate and on to the outfield. The ovation Colin received going out was every bit as thunderous as any coming in after another of his magical hundreds. He was 19 not out, by the way. There is that famous photo of him at this very moment, giving the photographer a shy little smile as he passed. Did he quietly mouth, ‘Gosh, this is fun, isn’t it?’
He recounted later that it was bedlam by the time he reached the pitch. The West Indians were shouting to each other and Frank Worrell was trying to make himself heard above the tumult of the crowd as he beseeched his fast bowler not to bowl a no-ball. And the calmest man in St John’s Wood was David Allen, Colin recalled.
Nothing was said between them. Nothing needed to be said. Colin, thankfully, was at the non-striker’s end and would only have to face one ball at the very most. Allen was intent he should be spared that. Calmly, he blocked the last two deliveries and a game of almost unbearable tension had ended. The match was drawn, the series reignited, popular interest in Test cricket reborn and the myth-making began. Colin had this to say by way of a final comment on one of the great Test matches, ‘My injury apart, it was perhaps the best cricket match I have played in, for tension and excitement and constant changes of fortune.’
For all that, it was a long period of inactivity, which lasted well into the winter, as the bone healed, no doubt interspersed with bouts of introspection and self-doubt. He joked that ‘it was a good place to get hit’, the significance of which would not be lost on any batsman cognisant of the eternal verities of an orthodox technique; in other words, he was in the correct place, left elbow up, leading with the top hand, when the ball struck. All right, it was unlucky that it had bounced more than he had expected, but at least he had not abandoned ship, turned away and taken his eye off the ball. One happy consequence of his injury was that he was able to spend a rare Christmas at home.
It was in that fallow period following the holiday season and the excesses of New Year that the phone rang in the Cowdrey household. MCC secretary Billy Griffith was on the line. Conversation soon turned to the current travails of the MCC party in India, not so much poor form or loss of matches but the catastrophic injury and illness list. It seemed that one by one the team were being picked off as if at a turkey shoot and reserves were being urgently sought.
Colin had been lined up to captain the side but his arm had not healed in time and in his absence, M.J.K. Smith had taken hold of the reins. It was not odd, therefore, that Griffith should seek the advice and opinion of the leader left behind. And then an uncontrollable urge took hold; Colin volunteered himself. He had been deeply disappointed to miss out on the privilege of leading an MCC side to the land of his birth. His arm was fine. After all, it had stood up the strenuous task of carving the turkey. What possible fears could the Indian bowlers present in comparison? Almost as soon as he blurted out his wish to help out, he was having second thoughts. Too late. Twenty-four hours later, he was on a plane to the subcontinent.
The parallels between that telephone call and one made by Mike Denness ten years later are extraordinary, the only difference being that on this occasion, Colin volunteered himself whereas the cri de coeur from Australia had come from the team. The bottom line was no different, however. He was abandoning the comfy hearth of home in the middle of winter to play in a Test match in possibly the harshest environment in which to adapt. His team-mates had been in the country for longer and they were dropping like ninepins. Furthermore, he hadn’t picked up a bat for seven months.
Batting one-handed was all very well for a desperate two balls but more would be expected from him than just bravery. Ah, but this is India, he told himself, my birthplace, where the people, the food, the culture are familiar. Had things turned out a little differently, I could have been playing for the home side. How much the teeming, bustling metropolises of Delhi, Calcutta and Bombay were going to remind him of the green rolling slopes of the Nilgiri Hills remained to be seen. Not at all, as he unsurprisingly discovered.
When he arrived, the situation was even worse than he had imagined. In the first two Tests, for the visitors it was simply a case of if you’re upright, you’re playing. A brief glance at the scorecards underlines how short the selection meetings must have been. In the first match, Micky Stewart, an opener, is batting at number ten. In the second, he is batting at 11 and the only entry alongside his name is ‘absent ill’. Furthermore, both wicketkeepers have been pressed into action, Jimmy Binks with the gloves and Jim Parks as a batsman. England had to borrow a 12th man from India when they fielded.
So with just a couple of nets as preparation, Colin was playing in the third Test. Under the circumstances, his innings of 107 out of a total of 267 was a creditable effort, though hard going. His 151 in the fourth was less easily excused. ‘It killed English hopes,’ Wisden reported, so slow and sluggish was the run rate. ‘Cowdrey appears unaware of his vast potential...he stood suspiciously aloof in Delhi, leaving others to attempt the scoring rate needed.’ It was on this tour that his great friend, John Woodcock, was moved to criticise his batting in print, calling it ‘pawky’ and ‘stodgy’ and wondering aloud what on earth it was that persuaded Colin to go into his shell like that. Even Colin admitted that neither innings was ‘a work of art’.
In all fairness, the tedious rate of play was not all Colin’s fault, nor was he solely guilty. The pitches were uniformly slow and low, which meant that all five Tests were doomed to stalemate from the outset. So lifeless were the playing surfaces that ‘even a competent craftsman could bat successfully with a broom handle’, thundered our Woodcock, ‘and the nature of the play inflicted sore wounds on the game of cricket.’ Even I, a loyal fan with all the enthusiasm of a 14-year-old, was bored reading about it in the papers.
The Ashes contest back home in 1964 wasn’t much better either. Three out of the five Tests were spoiled by rain, Australia won a dull series 1-0 and international cricket seemed unable to sail out of the doldrums.
Colin was similarly deflated, struggling to find wind to fill his sails. For the first time in his Test career, he was dropped. Recalled for the fifth Test at The Oval after some scintillating innings for Kent, he found his touch, at this level at any rate, just as elusive as before but slowly confidence surged, the strokes began to flow and during his second innings of 93 not out, he passed 5,000 Test runs.
However, it is not his batting in this match, or indeed during the series, for which he is best remembered but a catch, not a difficult or spectacular one – in fact, it could be described as ‘regulation’ – but a historic one nonetheless. The photo of him pouching the ball at first slip, at a comfortable height just to his right, following a snick by Neil Hawke, is as famous as they come.
Like Colin, Fred Trueman had been dropped from the side, frustratingly three wickets short of the magical number of 300, never before achieved in Test cricket. Together with Colin, he was recalled for The Oval. Everybody knew, including him, he was coming to the end of his illustrious, 14-year career as a fast bowler. This final Test of the summer could conceivably be his last. Predictably, nerves set in (as they would some years later, when Colin approached his own personal milestone of 100 first-class hundreds), he could not find his rhythm and he bowled like a drain. In the end, Dexter had to take him off, wicketless.
John Woodcock clearly recollected the dejected walk, from short leg at one end to short leg at the other, a once proud and fearsome fast bowler dispirited, down on his luck and inwardly cursing the cricketing gods. There would probably be no last burst, there would be no second innings (rain had seen to that) and in all likelihood, there would be no more Tests. For his team-mates, his misery was hard to witness.
As fate would have it, a stand developed and Dexter was in a bit of a fix. In an instant, Trueman was at his shoulder. ‘Give me t’ ball,’ he demanded and without waiting for a reply, he snatched it from Dexter’s grasp and marched to the end of his run. There were only three overs left in the morning session, so Dexter laughingly gave in.
Trueman’s first three balls were high, wide and handsome. He regained his line sufficiently in the remaining balls to gain one more over, the last before lunch. Suddenly, he ripped out Redpath’s middle stump and the next ball he had McKenzie caught by Cowdrey at slip. With a characteristic predilection for the dramatic, in front of a full house on the Saturday of an Oval Test, Trueman was on a hat-trick, on 299 wickets, on the verge of immortality – and it was lunch.
Even the corporate diners forwent their pudding, intent on not missing that first ball after the break. There was no hat-trick but Trueman was bowling like a man inspired. He would not be denied. Not long after, he found the edge of Hawke’s bat, the ball flew to first slip and to a tremendous roar from the crowd, Colin clung on to it. Gratefully, Trueman sank into Colin’s arms. Asked later how he felt at breaching the hitherto unthinkable record of 300 Test wickets, his reply was true Trueman, ‘Bluidy knackered.’
So it was that neither of the two cameos of Colin that had imprinted themselves in the public consciousness of the mid-1960s had anything to do with his batting; one had been walking out to bat at Lord’s with a broken arm and the other catching Fred Trueman’s 300th wicket.
Colin was at the mid-point of his career and at something of a crossroads. Of course, he was not to know he was halfway through his cricket career. As with all sports, he was but one serious injury or catastrophic loss of form from the coup de grace. He was fortunate; his playing career lasted longer than many.
I remember during my one and only conversation with him at Tunbridge Wells back in 1973, for some reason or other – probably because I had recently had a knee operation – we briefly discussed knees, the most troublesome and badly designed of all the joints. ‘I’ve been lucky,’ he said with feeling, ‘I haven’t had problems with my knees. Brain, yes, but not knees.’
By and large, he was lucky with injury, though when it did strike, it always seemed to be at the most inopportune moment. He had been playing at the top level for ten years but now he had been dropped from the Test side and the suspicion was taking hold that he was not, for the time being at any rate, an automatic selection, the first name on the team sheet, one of the ‘untouchables’, as Jose Mourinho put it.
His form had been erratic. Did he privately harbour negative thoughts? Was he going through another crisis of confidence? Was the belief in his ability starting to erode? He is no longer here so we cannot know. Ah, but wait a minute. Browsing through his notes, I noticed a whole chapter entitled ‘Flaws In My Game’. A whole chapter! This from one of the most technically gifted batsmen of his generation. I looked for a chapter entitled ‘Bowling Attacks I Have Put To The Sword’ but in vain. Blowing his own trumpet was just not his style. He really did not think he was as good as everybody said he was. Some of the critical detail contained therein – it is a very long chapter, incidentally – is interesting and illuminating.
‘The particular criticism levelled at my batting,’ he begins, ‘is that all too often I would allow ordinary bowlers to dominate me when really I ought to be lifting myself above them and destroying them.’
He does not ascribe this to any weaknesses in his game but rather to the different venues where he performed, or more specifically, the different types of pitches on which he played. He accepts that the best batsmen should be able to play on all surfaces and agrees that he, to some extent, learnt over time how to cope with varying conditions. But he certainly felt more comfortable and more confident about going for his shots on certain wickets than others. He pinpoints slow pitches as his bugbear. ‘Slow, low, spongy surfaces, with accurate bowlers operating to defensively set fields, would find me like Samson without hair,’ he confesses.
Basically, he felt that he could never hit through the line of the ball. In other words, he simply could not open his shoulders and give the ball a crack. As he relied so much on timing, with soft hands, bringing the bat in late and using the pace of the ball to ease it on its way, he found it difficult to free up his arms and basically smash it in the opposite direction. On quicker wickets, he came into his own. It is no surprise, therefore, that he flourished on the harder, faster pitches of Australia and the West Indies.
Undoubtedly, this is why he was so good at rackets. The hard ball, no bigger than a golf ball, whizzes around the concrete walls and skids off the concrete floor of a court the size of a hangar and somehow you have to get your racket on it. The best players merely lean on it, hitting through the line and easing it on its rapid course. No strength is required, merely timing and a good eye. That is more or less how Colin batted. May, Dexter, Sheppard, Smith, even Barrington when he was in the mood, could smash the ball out of sight. Colin could not. He caressed it.
The nearest of his contemporaries in impeccable timing and elegant strokeplay was, I guess, Tom Graveney. Both were brought up in the days before one-day cricket and both were still playing when it was introduced, dipping their toes in the water, so to speak. I asked Tom how he would have adapted to the crash, bang, wallop of the modern limited-overs game. He gave me an old-fashioned look. ‘I think I might have scored a few.’
The same with Colin. He made the point in these notes that the fundamentals of batting do not change. He would have trusted his technique and looked for the gaps in the field, as he always did. Where his jaw dropped in admiration is when he analyses the fancy new shots that contemporary batsmen have fashioned and perfected. He makes mention of the reverse sweep, ‘I keep my mouth firmly closed here for I was no good at all in this department. I marvel just how good at it a number of players have become.’ But caution still informs his opinion. ‘These shots are a big risk and each batsman has to work out his own way of extemporising.’
I wonder. Had Colin, and indeed Tom, been brought up in a later generation, would he have thrown caution to the wind in limited-overs cricket and unfurled, without inhibition, his vast range of strokes? I am reminded of the example of the New Zealander, Glenn Turner, who attributed the influence of the one-day game in transforming him from a plodding journeyman into a thrilling shotmaker. Where Colin would have struggled, and did, even in the early days of the Gillette Cup and the John Player League, was in the field.
Recognising his batting sometimes seemed as burdensome to him as turning a heavy millstone to make grain, Colin candidly admitted that, if he had his time again, he would have practised harder at developing more aggressive strategies to combat slow pitches and defensive fields. ‘I should have spent more time in the nets improving my batting on slower wickets.’ When forced to adapt his technique and give the ball a ‘biff’ as he called it, he really didn’t know what he was doing. ‘It was not a matter of looking odd, I felt odd and tended to cling to the style that had served me so well. This was a MISTAKE.’ The capitals are his. ‘I should have applied myself with determination to add new methods to my game.’
He remembers batting with Peter May in a one-day exhibition match in Canberra, in other words, not a terribly serious contest. The wicket was slow and low and a couple of goodish off-spinners were operating. Colin was playing orthodox shots against the off break, that is, turning the wrists and closing the face of the bat when the ball was wicket to wicket, thus hitting with the spin on the leg side. If the ball was pitched outside the line of off stump, he would look to hit it through the off side. But he was having trouble piercing the shrewdly set field.
May, by contrast, was having no such problems. He simply placed his front foot straight down the wicket and hit the ball in the air, over the infield, in an arc between mid-off and cover point, ‘inside out’, as cricketers call it. It was the same when a slow left-armer came on. Colin was hitting the ball with the spin, in other words into the offside field, which was heavily populated. May merely plonked his foot down the wicket and ‘fetched’ the ball over to the leg side, which wasn’t heavily populated. Mike Smith had played in the same way, to Colin’s great admiration, when he got his double hundred in the Varsity match of 1954.
The crucial point of May’s technique, Colin observed, was ‘getting hurry on the bat through the ball – what golfers call speed of the club head through the ball.’ This being an exhibition match, Colin was minded to try and follow suit. It felt alien to him. ‘I tried it in the nets or when the pressure was off, like here, but I rarely had the confidence to do it in the middle, during a Test match. My method was a light bat, a calm frame of mind and stillness at the crease, moving only when the ball was released. I found it difficult to make up my mind where and how to hit it before the ball was bowled.’
He finishes his searing self-examination with regret, ‘I should have copied Mike Smith, by fetching the ball pitched outside the off stump on to the leg side, and done the same as Peter, and practised hitting over the top.’ Try as he might, he could not do it regularly as a means of getting out of trouble or breaking a deadlock; he could only manage it when well set.
The other bane of his cricketing life, the scourge of the England captaincy and his ambition to lead a side abroad, continued to bedevil him throughout this period. Press speculation resurfaced when the incumbent, Ted Dexter, in his mercurial way, had made himself unavailable for the tour to South Africa in 1964/65 because he was contesting the seat of Cardiff South East as a Conservative candidate in the general election. His opponent was Jim Callaghan and he lost but by then the selectors had already appointed his successor – not Colin, but Mike Smith. Colin had originally made himself unavailable but then changed his mind but it was too late. His inclusion would have unbalanced a side already decided upon.
Smith did a fine job in South Africa, winning the series 1-0, on the strength of which he was retained as captain for the home series in 1965 against New Zealand and South Africa. In the meantime, Dexter had been the victim of an unfortunate accident, breaking his leg when his Jaguar pinned him against a warehouse door as he was pushing it to the nearby garage to fill an empty tank. It signalled, more or less, the end of his Test career. The way was clear for Smith to make the job of captain his for the foreseeable future.
The thing is that Colin had no problem, either on a personal or a professional level, with Smith’s appointment. No qualms, no misgivings, no resentment, no apprehensions. In fact, he went so far as to say, ‘Mike Smith was one of the best captains I have played with.’
They had known each other since their Oxford days, they had been team-mates, they respected each other as cricketers and both knew that they had the interests of the England team at heart. Colin found him calm and unflappable, even in the most dramatic of situations. ‘Mike’s answer to a problem was usually to doze off or do the Daily Telegraph crossword. And then he would give his decision, clearly and definitively.’
Colin’s high opinion of Smith as a captain was shared by most of the players in the teams he led. They appreciated his undemonstrative style, his absent-minded, professorial approach, his cheerful confidence, in himself and his players, and his sensible, thoughtful decision-making. Above all, he allowed the individuals in his side to be themselves, believing that if they were good enough to be picked for England, they would be good enough to make up their own minds how they should play.
Above all, he had no ego; everything was subordinate to the needs of the team. The tours to South Africa and Australia were deemed to be among the happiest undertaken by MCC since the war. ‘Look, I skippered most of the sides I played in,’ he told me, ‘so I was pretty experienced in the job. I enjoyed it. I trusted the boys and we had very little trouble off the field. And we had a good side, which helps!’
One hopes that Colin put all thoughts of the captaincy to one side and concentrated on his own game, mid-career wobble or not. His form that summer was greatly improved. Against the New Zealanders, his 119 at Lord’s helped to clinch a victory by seven wickets and in the third Test at Headingley, where England completed a clean sweep of the series, he witnessed the most improbable triple century of all time.
It seems absurd to report that John Edrich’s 310 not out was lucky – but it was. The wicket was greenish in colour and each ball left a mark as it seamed about, sometimes extravagantly so. It was not easy to bat on, as Colin found out for himself. His innings of 13 was painfully accumulated, with much playing and missing, before he was bowled. Meanwhile, at the other end, Edrich was swatting the bowling seemingly without a care in the world. He would play and miss on average twice an over, Colin reckoned, but then he would hit a four. Then another four. Sometimes a six. His tally contained 57 boundaries, the highest number in any Test innings. Colin was in awe. He wrote, ‘I am convinced I shall never see another innings like it.’
He was particularly impressed with Edrich’s total concentration, how he put aside at once the ball that he had just missed and set his mind to playing the next. ‘It is a gift that all great champions have, whatever the sport.’
The South Africans later that summer were made of sterner stuff, determined to avenge their defeat at the hands of Smith’s team that winter. This they did, with a solitary victory in the second Test at Trent Bridge. The Nottingham crowd, together with Colin at closer quarters, had their first sighting of the new wunderkind from the Cape, Graeme Pollock, whose majestic 125 (out of 269) in the first innings paved the way for a 94-run victory. The only other player to reach three figures on either side was Colin (105 out of 240).
Apart from GP, as Graeme Pollock was known, the other player from the visitors who captivated English supporters was Colin Bland. For his fielding, not his batting, though he was a formidable batsman in his own right. It is difficult to explain to a modern audience what an impact he made wherever the South Africans were playing. There is no really outstanding fielder around today and that may be because the overall standard of fielding has greatly improved over the years, an undoubted by-product of the proliferation of one-day cricket. They’re all good fielders now.
The South Africans were always acclaimed for their athletic fielding and this side were no different. But Bland stood out, even among these naturally gifted sportsmen. One’s mind wanders down the list of magnificent outfielders over the years – Alan Ealham, Derek Randall, Paul Sheahan, Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd (before these two West Indians took to the slips), Jonty Rhodes – but none of them could hold a candle to Bland. He was phenomenal.
Colin was not alone in his wide-eyed astonishment of Bland’s two run-outs in one afternoon in the Lord’s Test. His victims were Ken Barrington and Jim Parks. Jim told me that when he knew he was in trouble and was sprinting for the other end, making sure that he had put his body between Bland and the stumps, Bland actually threw the ball under his legs to send the middle stump cartwheeling out of the ground. It was breathtaking.
I remember attending the Oval Test that summer and I couldn’t take my eyes off Bland all day as he prowled about in the covers. He had an extraordinary throw, not really overarm, more of a mid-shoulder flick, and the ball would arrow to bail height, with no discernible arc in its trajectory. More often than not, the wicketkeeper would have to lean slightly over the top of the stumps to prevent Bland’s throw from wrecking them. It is from that afternoon that I can date my abiding love affair with fielding. It was not only players from other countries who feared Bland with a ball in his hand.
His own countrymen were petrified of him. Barry Richards told me a story of a Currie Cup match. Whenever the ball went on the side of the wicket where Bland was lurking, a great shout from the dressing room, let alone the two batsmen, went up. ‘NO!’ Bland drifted deeper and deeper, practically patrolling the boundary. Still no one dared take the proffered single. Bland would lope in, pick up the ball and lob it back, underarm, to the bowler. How many runs were shunned is not recorded. It was only after the match had finished that Bland admitted he had thrown his arm out.
We are indebted to Colin for a snippet of the most riveting piece of sporting television from that era. So impressed was he by Bland’s fielding that he asked him whether he was prepared to put on a little exhibition when the South Africans visited Canterbury. The ever modest Bland agreed, surprised but delighted. A large crowd gathered to watch the spectacle. A set of stumps was put up, a box of balls was produced and one of the Kent team rolled each ball along the ground some 25 yards in the direction of the fielder, to his left and right.
I will let Colin describe what happened, ‘With Bland’s first throw, he knocked the stumps sideways, with the next two he missed narrowly, with his fourth he lifted two stumps out of the ground and with his fifth he laid the remaining one flat.’
There was no sixth. The spontaneous applause was long and appreciative. Colin bemoaned the fact that no video footage was taken of the exhibition but in this he is wrong. It was broadcast on television later. I know. I saw it. Sadly, he ends his reminiscences of the summer with the observation that this was the last the English public were to see of a South African side poised on the cusp of greatness. The political storm clouds were gathering and, as we know, Colin was about to be caught in its eye.
Though he did not wish it, speculation among one or two reporters that Colin was seriously being considered for the captaincy of the forthcoming tour to Australia resurfaced in the weeks before the party was announced. In the event, he was content that the selectors kept faith with Smith in spite of losing the three-match series against South Africa and more than happy to support his friend as vice-captain on his fourth tour of that country, his third as second-in-command.
This time, he was not press-ganged into opening. There were three openers in the party, Boycott, Barber and Edrich, and they all played in all five Tests, Edrich going in at number three.
‘You know, I never understood his problem with opening,’ Mike Smith confided in me. ‘Technically, he was well suited. It was a reflection of everybody’s regard for his ability that he was asked to do it. I know he never really fancied it but he was so good he could have made it his own.’
Making room for another middle-order batsman was the unspoken supplement, of which England had a few – Dexter, Barrington, Smith, Graveney, with Parfitt, Close and others in the wings. Smith believes that Colin ought to have been given full rein as captain in the West Indies in 1959/60, when May was ill, shouldn’t have gone and was forced to come home early. ‘It would have settled things a bit,’ Smith said. But this was 1965/66 now and Smith had his own way of doing things.
There was a marvellous piece filed by Ian Wooldridge for the Daily Mail about a press conference early on in the tour. He describes the England captain thus, ‘He strolled in with an open-necked shirt, a white linen jacket which appeared to have been slept in for a week and a carrycot containing a slumbering junior member of the Smith dynasty. Apparently, Mrs Smith had gone shopping and MJK was left holding the baby.’ This calmness, Colin knew, was part of his philosophy, which some people mistakenly took for softness.
The avowed intent of MCC was no different to the aims of the previous tour to Australia under Dexter, to win back the Ashes by playing attractive cricket. Oddly, the narrative of events followed more or less a similar pattern. England played well, took a 1-0 lead but their impetus faltered, Australia fought back immediately, the series was tied at 1-1 and stalemate came to pass. Thus Australia retained the urn and what had promised much for the Englishmen ended in disappointment. Colin had a good tour. He missed the first Test through illness but scored his usual hundred at Melbourne, his favourite ground overseas, and ended up with an average of 53.40.
How was Colin as a tourist and vice-captain? Smith’s reply was unhesitating. ‘He was a good tourist, very helpful, as you would expect. He wasn’t a drinker and didn’t prop up the bar after play but the thing is, he knew so many people everywhere he went that he was always asked out for dinner somewhere. No surprise really. He was such a nice bloke. I always got on well with him.’
And as a player? ‘I loved watching him bat. The purity of his batsmanship was a joy. His temperament was not to bash the ball but ease it away with perfect timing. He would provide the anchor of the innings. Everybody who played with him said he was one of the best. And don’t forget his slip catching, par excellence. Not the most mobile and not given to flinging himself around. But great hands. All the bowlers wanted him in the slips.’
In his book, Colin refers to the 1960s as the era of the West Indies. He was not to know at the time of writing that the era was to extend through the 1970s and 1980s to the 1990s, before it came to an end. The 1966 vintage were lying in wait that summer and England were duly ambushed. The first Test was lost embarrassingly easily, by an innings and 40 runs, and heads were going to roll. Why that should always have to be a natural consequence of defeat I am never quite sure but the experts and pundits seem to think as much, so it must be so.
The head most likely to roll – it always is – was the head himself, the captain. Colin, for one, thought this was unfair. Smith had done well in Australia and had the team’s confidence. Jim Parks believed the result of the game rested on the toss, which Smith lost. I have my own theory. It was because the West Indies had more initials before their names, an advantage we would normally associate with the amateur, public school tradition of the English. Only M.J.K. Smith could be put in the same bracket as the splendidly initialled A.D.A. St J. McMorriss, G. St A. Sobers and his cousin, D.A.J. Holford. The selectors however blamed the captain and Smith was sacked.
And that was it? ‘Er, not quite. I was recalled for the 1972 series against Australia. But it was the end of the England captaincy for me, you’re right.’ Any qualms? ‘None whatsoever. I wasn’t getting enough runs. That was the long and the short of it. No, I had no problems with being dropped.’ I’m intrigued, Mike, what was Colin like as a runner between the wickets? He laughed. ‘For someone who got rejected by the RAF because of his feet, he wasn’t too bad. You wouldn’t be pressing for two very often, mind you. But he was a good judge of a run.’ You kept in touch? ‘Indeed we did. We’d meet up at Lord’s from time to time and we were on the same MCC cricket committee for a time. Nice chap. Couldn’t help but be fond of him. He was the obvious choice to take over once I’d been dropped.’
It was with a resigned shrug that Colin took the expected call from the chairman of selectors. Yes, of course he would be delighted to step once more into the breach. It is always an honour to captain one’s country. No, I’m sure the boys will readily fall in behind me. It’s a pity I have no time to plan, to prepare, to put my mark on the team but we all know what to do and we’re all professionals. Well, of course, I’m not a professional myself, but you know what I mean. Yes, I understand it’s not a permanent appointment. So how long will...? Ah, three Tests. I see. But there are four left. Never mind. I shall do my best.
He could have written the script himself. He had been there before, on more than one occasion. At least the next match was at Lord’s. He never lost the sense of anticipation and awe whenever he stepped on to the playing surface at HQ. And it was an honour to captain his country at the home of cricket.
To rejig the batting, in came Boycott, Graveney, after an inexplicable three years in the wilderness and D’Oliveira, who will be looming large in our story shortly. Nobody who saw, and heard, the thunderous welcome the MCC members gave to Graveney as he walked out to bat on his return to the Test side will ever forget it, only exceeded perhaps by the reception as he came back, four agonising runs short of a triumphant century. The England team seemed energised.
When West Indies subsided to 95/5 in their second innings (effectively 9/5), a home victory seemed all but assured. One man stood in their way, however, and when that man was Sobers, you always feared the worst. Together with his cousin David Holford, they moved the score up to 369 before Sobers declared. They were both undefeated, Sobers on 163 and Holford on 105.
Colin came in for some predictable but slightly unfair criticism for his lack of imagination in attempting to dismiss Sobers. But he would not have been the first, nor was he to be the last, to be thwarted by the brilliance and the genius of the greatest cricketer the world has ever seen. Sobers was at it again in the third and fourth Tests, scoring 94 at Trent Bridge and 174 at Headingley. England had drawn at Lord’s but there was no hiding place in the other two Tests, which they lost heavily.
No prizes for guessing the gist of the phone call Colin received at the completion of his temporary three-match stint in charge, ‘Really sorry, old boy, such a shame...but we feel the time has come for a change, new blood and all that…you do understand, I’m sure…but thank you for your efforts, much appreciated…oh, by the way, we feel it best that you take a rest at The Oval…go away and recharge your batteries at Kent.’
That is precisely what he did. He was grateful for the enveloping blanket of support and sympathy from his home county because the hurt was considerable. His last chance of nailing down the captaincy of his country had come and gone and he felt sore. In retrospect, he believed it was a mistake by the selectors to call on him again; they would have been better served if they had made a complete break from the past and appointed someone new. His last words on the matter sound so sorrowful, ‘It would certainly have saved me a great deal of personal pain.’