6

Man of Kent

Kent CCC 1950–76

‘Cricket without fun...well, it’s just no fun at all.’

Colin Cowdrey

‘KIPPER – he’s a god here among the hop-pickers.’ I gave a wry, sidelong glance at my driver as he negotiated the high-hedged lanes of Kent. I was amused by the fact that he had combined the image of a fish, a deity and a seasonal industry, all in one short sentence. Mike Taylor, my friend and team-mate at Hampshire, had a rich lexicon of expressive idioms, including a whole glossary of Cockney rhyming slang. He also had an encyclopaedic knowledge of his fellow pros.

He was right about Colin Cowdrey. I noted that when he came in to bat – it was at Tunbridge Wells – the members stood to applaud him to the wicket. When he went out to bat, mark you, not when he came back; it was as if he was making his farewell appearance. He was not. There was plenty of life in the old dog yet but clearly he enjoyed an exalted position in the affections of the Kent faithful.

Kent is a bit of an odd county, I have always thought, and this is from one who lived there for a time. For the most part, people drive through it, on their way to the continent, rather than stop off in it, as a destination. Despite the fact that road and rail links with London are second to none, the place always felt a little cut off. I am reminded of a bizarre exchange we had with our opponents in a Second XI Championship game between Kent and Hampshire at the Crabble Ground in Dover, a quite beautiful and spectacular arena carved out of the side of the hill. The cause of the dispute between the two teams escapes me, so it cannot have been very important, probably something to do with a breakdown in communications between the captains about a declaration. The conversation went something like this:

‘Typical. How can you trust a county that plays at nine different venues?’

‘To paraphrase Winston Churchill.’

‘Eh?’

‘He was being rude about the French. He said, how can you trust a nation that has 300 different types of cheeses.’

‘That was de Gaulle, not Churchill.’

‘Whatever. Didn’t know the Frogs played cricket.’

‘What’s cheese got to do with it anyway?’

The point was – I think – that Kent had no home. Well, they did, it was Canterbury, but they played so many of their home games at other places that they seemed to lack a base, a focal point, a fortress. Most home games to their own players must have felt like away matches. Not that the Kent members worried much about that. What was indisputable was that the support for their team around the county was as passionate and as vociferous as anywhere.

And at the apex of their veneration was Colin Cowdrey. County members always hold a special place in their hearts for one of their own, a loyal and dependable member of the team who is born and bred in their midst. Colin was not born in Kent but he was locally grown. Moreover, he was an England player, captain no less, revered around the world, and he was theirs. I’m sure Colin was aware of the eminence of his stature at Kent – he certainly gave a little, shy smile as he was applauded to the wicket that day – but I expect he found it a strain too.

‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.’

How did Colin Cowdrey attain such an exalted position in the affection of Kent supporters? In which of the three categories of greatness, enunciated by Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, did he fit? Colin’s prowess as a batsman, you could argue, he was born with. So far as his leadership qualities can be traced, undoubtedly his background and education prepared him for positions of authority, greatness by any other name. As for Malvolio’s final dictum, Colin may have had the captaincy of Kent ‘thrust’ upon him rather more quickly than he had anticipated but I doubt he demurred.

Few were in any doubt at the time that Colin was destined, sooner or later, to assume the captaincy of his home county. ‘Kipper was probably inked in as a future skipper when he was at Tonbridge,’ A.C. Smith told me. ‘Think about it – captain at Tonbridge, captain at Oxford, established England player and, crucially, an amateur.’

It was while he was on tour in South Africa in 1956/57 that he got the call – actually, of course, it was a cable – from the Kent cricket committee, one of whose members was his father-in-law, Stuart Chiesman, asking him to take over the captaincy the following summer. Colin was now 25, not exactly a youngster, but there were plenty of older, more experienced players in that Kent team, not least of whom was his England team-mate, Godfrey Evans. How would they take to being led by a relative rookie? The clue lies in that one word of Alan Smith’s – ‘amateur’.

You see, the 1950s were quite different to the 1960s and 1970s, in cricket as in so many things. Colin’s career spanned two generations, from Lindwall and Miller, ocean voyages, short back and sides, jackets and ties, big bands and Gentlemen and Players to Lillee and Thomson, jet travel, shoulder-length hair, flares, big collars and definitely no ties, stadium rock and stroppy egalitarianism.

This being 1957, in an altogether more deferential age, it is unlikely that any of the senior players of that Kent team would have considered his appointment out of order, and if they did, they would have kept their mouths shut. Godfrey Evans gave his immediate, unequivocal support, ‘Give it a go, Master. We’ll be behind you.’ Colin was already known as ‘Master’ in the Kent dressing room.

There were two reasons Evans was so confident that Colin would have the full support of his Kent team-mates. First, they knew that the committee would revert to the practice of having an amateur captain, following the less than successful tenure of the professional, Doug Wright. Wright had been a fine servant of both Kent and England but as Colin diplomatically put it, he was finding the job of captaincy ‘burdensome’.

So, if it is going to be an amateur, most of the team would have reasoned that at least we will have an amateur who is worth his place in the team. After all, some counties had amateur captains foisted upon them who were simply not good enough players. Not only will we have a good player as a captain, they would have argued, but also we will have one of England’s finest. The other reason was that Kent were struggling, and had been for a number of years. The halcyon period of the pre-war years, with Frank Woolley, Tich Freeman, Les Ames and Doug Wright strutting their stuff, was long ago. Perhaps this young man will usher in a new era.

If that was to be so, it wasn’t going to happen overnight. As was his wont, Colin sat down and pondered the task ahead, its magnitude and how best to set about it. A plan was what he needed and he loved planning. First and foremost – and in this regard he was very much to the fore of current thinking – he recognised that he needed help to run things, to wit, a manager. The role, to the best of his knowledge, had never been initiated at county level. But it made sense the more he thought about it.

He assumed that he was now an England fixture and would be for some time so it was likely he would miss a fair number of county games each season. He would therefore need someone to run things in his absence, someone he could trust and someone the rest of the team would follow. Not on the field of play – he could leave that to his vice-captain – but as a permanent presence around the place, to organise, to support, to control, to censure, in short to ensure that always things were done the Kent way.

It needed a special person with special qualities and in truth there was only one such man. Les Ames had been an outstanding wicketkeeper-batsman for Kent and England before the war and was, to put it mildly, a legend in these parts. Retired now, he needed persuading to return to the fold, albeit in a non-playing capacity, but Colin was confident by now of his ability to twist arms. Sure enough Ames agreed. The partnership endured and flourished until 1972 and their friendship until Ames’s death in 1990.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day. For a start, there were only 15 players on the staff. Yes, a team comprises 11 players so, in theory, four reserves in case of injury does not sound so bad. Several factors have to be taken into consideration, g1 however. Regular calls were made on Kent players for Test match duty, more and more as they became increasingly successful. Fifteen contracted professionals suddenly seem slim pickings.

Furthermore, where was the next generation going to come from if there were not enough players to compete properly in the Second XI Championship? Up until this point, Kent had been relying on a cohort of amateur club players to make up the numbers, most of whom were no more than that, stocking fillers. Compared to other counties, Kent were woefully understaffed. The players they had were past their peak. The war had deprived the county stalwarts, Fagg, Todd, Valentine, Wright et al, of their best years and this was reflected in the two decades afterwards when results were generally disappointing. This was true of all counties of course but Kent seemed less equipped than most to make up the shortfall.

The grounds were rackety, dilapidated and barely fit for purpose. Colin remembers the team having to change in shifts in some dressing rooms because they were so small and the continual hazard of splinters from wooden floors raked by studded boots was a nuisance they could have all done without. Facilities across the board were in urgent need of upgrading. But where was the money coming from? The year before, 1956, the club had made a loss of £12,000, an almost catastrophic figure in those days. One ray of sunshine in all this gloom was that Kent seemed to be maintaining its plentiful and loyal support around its outposts.

Colin’s job was threefold, he believed. First, he needed to improve standards and draft in younger, better players. To this end, he set in motion a system of recruitment that left no changing room or club bar in the county unvisited in Kent’s pursuit of new talent. He was going to build a team for the future. Secondly, he had to turn a deficit into a profit. This was not his prime responsibility – that was the committee’s job – but he saw it very much as his duty as captain to beat the drum around the cricket clubs and centres of influence. To this end, by his own calculation, he attended 164 functions during the winter of 1957/58, there being no overseas tour that year, to spread the gospel. Fine practice, you might say, for his later calling as an accomplished after-dinner speaker but I bet Penny, his new wife, was not that impressed.

However, needs must, and his beloved Kent demanded fealty. And lastly, he had to convince his team that they could do it. Many were of the firm conviction that it was impossible to win the championship playing at so many out grounds. Conditions varied and it was like playing every home game away. Not so, averred their captain; we have to build a team that is multi-functional, capable of winning in all conditions, on all surfaces.

That took time. It is clear enough from the records that Kent were everybody’s whipping boys once those fine players who had lost their best years to the war began to lose their edge and retire. Colin was still a young man and though he had made his debut way back in 1950, he was not really part of the scene until he returned from Australia in 1955.

What was it like during those fallow years, playing in a weak team, expecting to get beaten every time you took the field? I spoke to Derek Ufton, whom we have already met in these pages, about that depressing time. ‘The big players who had served us so well and for so long were simply not being replaced,’ he said. ‘Furthermore, we had a succession of not very good captains. It’s all right if you have a good team and everybody knows his job, then tactics become not so important and you can get by with a moderate leader. But we were a poor side from about 1950 onwards and for all that time we were without a proper captain.’

So what was the prevailing reaction to Colin’s appointment? ‘We were delighted. He was young, yes, but by no means inexperienced. The team had stability at last. Slowly, things started to improve.’ What about the influence of Les Ames? ‘Crucial. But Colin too must take a fair share of the credit for Kent’s revival. Les may have uncovered the talent but Colin built a team around that. While I was there – I retired in 1963 – we became a steady, consistent side. Good Lord, I was batting at number eight! And I can safely say I was the best number eight in the country.’

I was keen to ask him of his views of Colin as a captain. ‘Well, he was immature at the start. He needed to do a bit of growing up. Probably this had a lot to do with his being an only child, who didn’t see his parents for seven or eight years. Occasionally, he’d have problems with one or two of the older players but Les was a huge help and support. Slowly, Colin grew into the job. What’s more, he was getting a lot of hundreds for us. Such a wonderful player. Peter May was regarded as the best player in England after the war but there were times when Colin made him look like a selling plater.’

I beg your pardon? ‘A selling plater. Never heard of it? It’s a racing term, meaning a horse that’s not very good.’ I had to admit that my knowledge of horse racing jargon had never stretched that far but his judgement was clear enough. I had heard it said about Colin’s batting more times than I care to mention. Sometimes, he made it seem he was batting with the gods.

‘The point is, Colin was such a nice man. Every day of his life, he became a nicer man. He was no tactical genius, though he knew the game inside out. His strength as a leader was his personality. The rest, how we all played, what our jobs were...well, we knew what we had to do and we got on with it.’

There was one last word Ufton was keen to have. ‘Colin was president of Kent in 2000. He died in office. The position of president was in the gift of the incumbent. Before he died, he invited me to succeed him, which I did, in 2001. It was the kindest act and the greatest privilege.

Colin’s opinions on these stalwarts of his early years as captain are equally fulsome. In his notes, he refers to Ufton as ‘a marvellous person to have in your side, an excellent wicketkeeper and doughty left-handed batsman’. He said that Ufton was patient and understanding in his role as Godfrey Evans’s understudy, only coming into his own when Evans was injured (rarely) or on England duty (frequently). He also remembered being present at Wembley when Ufton made his first and only appearance in an England shirt against the Rest of the World in 1954. Colin knew his football so we can have faith in his judgement when he referred to Upton as a ‘hugely competent centre-half’.

Another footballer/cricketer who played for Kent at the time was Stuart Leary. Colin called him ‘one of the most gifted games players of all’. He was a regular fixture in the Charlton side, ‘small but fast, he held the ball for that vital, extra second, able to distribute the precision pass that would send the opposition into a panic’. Leary came over from Cape Town when he was 16 and ‘loved his cricket more than anything else’.

An exceptional close-to-the-wicket fielder, useful leg-spinner and fine batsman, he might well have become, according to Colin, an automatic Test cricketer had it not been for his football commitments. ‘He was an automatic selection for Kent when I was playing,’ said Colin, ‘but his batting did not quite blossom as we expected, no doubt on account of playing both games under the spotlight, which took its toll.’

At this juncture in the story of Colin’s county career, we might as well confront a controversy that started to swirl around him, namely the vexed question of ‘walking’. This refers to the unwritten law that pertained in the domestic game that you should walk if you know you are out without waiting for the umpire to be forced to make a decision.

Obviously, this did not include LBWs; no batsman is ever out LBW, as we know, and if he is given out LBW, that is only because of the incompetence of the umpire. No, it referred to whether or not the batsman had hit it, usually a snick to the wicketkeeper. The logic of this tacit understanding among the players was that the batsman invariably knew he had hit it and if he remained at the crease, feigning innocence, he was in effect ‘cheating’. One or two players on the circuit got a name for themselves as being a ‘cheat’ and unfortunately but incontrovertibly Colin was one of them.

I put the epithet in inverted commas to declare my misgivings about the whole business. First, it has to be pointed out that it only applied to county cricket. Test matches were exempt, for the very good reason that other countries simply did not abide by the custom; Australians, for one, were self-confessed non-walkers. They preferred to wait for, and abide by, the umpire’s decision.

Famously, Richie Benaud, captain of the visiting Australian touring team in 1961, when asked in a press conference about his views on walking, replied that he would leave it to each individual in his team whether to walk or not. Fair enough. Everybody knew where he stood. As long as there was no argument with the umpire once the decision has been made, right or wrong. But English county players, a tight-knit, relatively small band of brothers, felt that honesty should prevail and that the tradition of walking should be upheld. And if anyone fell short of the ideal, this being a small world in which word of mouth spread rapidly, he would be labelled a ‘cheat’.

All I can say is which of us can put hand on heart and state categorically that we have always walked? Even when it was the thinnest of edges? What happens if no one else hears the snick and doesn’t appeal? Do you walk off anyway? What if you have been the unfortunate victim of a succession of umpiring blunders? Are you not entitled to level things up a bit? What happens if it is the last ball of the match and yours is the last wicket? The temptation to stay would be nigh on overwhelming. What if this was your final chance to make a score before being dropped – yet again – and more than likely shown the door, the end to your career? Say you hated the bowler. He had been peppering you all day with bouncers, accompanied by muttered threats and evil glares, and your animosity had been fermenting for years? Are you really going to give your wicket to your worst enemy?

As you can see, the problem is hedged in with ambiguity and equivocation. For clarification, I sought the opinion of John Woodcock. ‘Les Ames used to say that everybody walked in the 1930s. Rubbish! It’s human nature not to walk on occasions. I know of no single player who walked every time. The Rev. David Sheppard – now, if you would expect anyone to be completely honest and walk every time, it would be him – he didn’t always walk.’ After a moment’s consideration, he added this, ‘With the possible exception of Ted Dexter. I do believe he walked, every time.’

So what about Colin? ‘Look, Colin never set himself up as a disciple of walking. The trouble was, I suppose, that he made a show of walking off immediately when he had obviously hit it, you know, bat under the arm and stripping off his gloves, as he quit the crease. But there were times when he didn’t, just like everybody else, and perhaps, perhaps, one or two umpires were swayed by that.’

Another person who knew Colin well and played against him was Hubert Doggart, captain of Sussex in 1954, headmaster of King’s School, Bruton in Somerset, treasurer and president of the MCC, a fellow administrator and lover of the game. What about Colin and the question of walking, Hubert? ‘We got to know each other well on a tour to the West Indies, organised by Jim Swanton, to heal the wounds of an acrimonious England tour there the year before. He was hit on the hand and he came up to me at the other end when the over was finished and made the extraordinary observation that batting is so difficult! Now Hammond would never have said that.’

Yes, but what about walking? ‘One minute. Don’t be impatient. I shall get there in the end. As Colin eased the ball to the boundary, I stood there in amazed admiration. What timing!’ And walking? ‘Walking! What nonsense. We were never encouraged to walk. It was never an issue in our era. I think it only became one later, long after I had finished playing. My sense is that this controversy about walking and Colin was all a bit manufactured. He never held himself up as an advocate of walking.’

So, there we are, as clear as mud. Was Colin a walker? Yes, most of the time. Was he a cheat? Not in my opinion and in the mind of others. Did some regard him as a cheat? Quite possibly, but as we have seen, the morality of the whole thing is cloudy at best. Let me leave the final word to Woodcock. ‘Colin played in a good era, where standards of sportsmanship were upheld. I don’t think he would have liked playing today. Even when he was alive, he was dismayed by the gradual erosion of manners and etiquette. He was the complete good man. Was he a saint...?’ He paused for effect. ‘I know of no saintly cricketer, do you? Not even the Rev. David Sheppard.’

By now, if not yet canonised, Colin was a hugely experienced county captain, to say nothing of his success in that role with the England team, so this seems as good a place as any to examine his style, his way of doing things. To my great good fortune, there is practically a whole chapter in his notes laying bare his thoughts on this very topic. There is nothing particularly revolutionary in the breakdown of his principles – he does not advocate new ideas like ‘leg theory’ (Jardine) or slow over rates (Hutton) or four-pronged pace attack (Lloyd) or ‘mental disintegration’ (Waugh) – but it does reveal the man under the cloak of office. In short, he captained as he lived his life, cautiously, considerately, conservatively but knowledgeably, thoughtfully and diligently.

Only a great captain – and he does not include himself among that small number – can get all of his team to perform at their maximum all the time, ‘So the skill and fun of leadership is to see how much he can get from his men.’ He is greatly exercised by temperament. ‘We are all temperamental and need careful handling,’ he writes. ‘As far as humanly possible, a captain must treat each individual as a special case.’ For example, to get the best out of Boycott and Snow, as he did on the tour of West Indies in 1967/68, both of whom were vastly different characters, he had to employ different strategies. As another example, he makes mention of his two England compatriots from Surrey, Jim Laker and Tony Lock. ‘Lock needed the stick and Laker the carrot.’

As you would expect, common decency informs all his actions. ‘The best captains in my experience never let slip a word of criticism against any of his players in public,’ and he goes on, ‘Look for the best and expect the best but be ready to make allowances, rather than carping at weaknesses.’

Easier said than done. Any cricketer who has captained a side knows what it is to have a sore tongue from biting it as he helplessly watches a dolly dropped or a careless fumble in the field. ‘Some captains stride around making a lot of noise,’ Colin observes, ‘but I have seen many good captains who have extended their authority and influence in a much quieter way.’

We can hazard a guess which style he espoused. Ah yes, here it is a little further down the page, ‘Personally, I prefer the quieter way. It suits my temperament.’ That is not to say that a captain should be a soft touch. I am reminded of Tom Graveney’s remark about his captain on that West Indies tour, ‘Colin was usually such a gentle and nice man... but on this tour he cracked the whip.’

There is an interesting and illuminating paragraph in these notes underlining his modus operandi. He believes that trial and error (e.g. experience) are needed to bring out the best of each member of his team. For example, when he first started out as a captain, the custom was for the captain (an amateur) to set and alter fields, even if it meant overruling the bowler (a professional). Colin tended to follow suit but then changed his mind. ‘I became very reluctant to do this. The bowlers were picked on merit to bowl sides out. I cannot do it for them. They must do it for themselves. I don’t expect them to tell me how to bat.’

Perhaps not. But there, he was one of the best batsmen in England. There might have been one or two amateur captains around, purportedly batsmen, who probably came in for a bit of sotto voce stick from their professional team-mates, but not the Kent captain. But listen to this, a telling affirmation of his captaincy style, ‘I regard the captain in the field as the chairman of the board, carving out an overall policy and leaving it to his departmental heads to get on with their jobs.’

His father-in-law, Stuart Chiesman, had he been still alive, would have nodded his head in agreement. Others might not. I am put in mind of more dictatorial captains, such as Jardine, Close, Illingworth, Greig, who employed different methods. That is not to say one way is right and the other way wrong. The two Mikes, Smith and Brearley, notably operated in a more collegiate manner.

As a captain, Colin felt that you had to enjoy the game and, crucially, convey your enjoyment to the rest of your team. ‘Cricket is a game of fun,’ he insists. ‘By fun, I do not mean hilarious social entertainment. The fun is in the heat of competition.’ That much is true, certainly from his perspective. Elsewhere, he admitted that he did not always bat as well as he might when there was nothing on the game, in a benefit, charity or dead match. He was at his best when something was riding on the result. When you are the captain, something is always riding on the result. Should your lack of enthusiasm for the contest manifest itself in any way, your players will soon pick this up and they too will find their energy draining away.

This concept of having ‘fun’ while still engaged in the combat of a Test match was very important to him. ‘I feel very strongly about this and felt ever more strongly about it as the years went by,’ he writes. He accepts that others might not agree with him, that all Test captains ‘would not put at the top of their lists of attributes for being a good captain fun or enjoyment or good cheer’.

One cannot imagine Raymond Illingworth, for example, encouraging his team to have fun out there in the middle of an Ashes Test. But Colin saw no paradox in playing to win while enjoying the contest. You can play just as tigerishly with a smile upon your face as a scowl. ‘In my time, I have seen the game become harder, tougher, sharper, more competitive, more commercial, more difficult. All the more reason,’ he contends, ‘for captains to foster this sense of fun.’ And he ends this homily with a passionate exhortation, ‘CRICKET WITHOUT FUN – WELL, IT’S JUST NO FUN AT ALL.’ The capitals are his.

That may be so, and there is little doubt that this principle remained the lodestar of his playing career and beyond, but one aspect of captaincy, which he did not particularly relish, was team selection. ‘Who’d be a selector?’ he ruefully asks at the beginning of one subsection. But he was; it went with the territory. His first painful lesson was at Tonbridge. He was no longer the tiny 13-year-old but now the captain. His closest friend had been having a hard time of it recently and was about to be dropped from the XI. Colin persuaded everyone that he should be given one last chance.

It was the wrong decision. He lay himself open to criticism – ‘captain’s pet’ and all that – and the poor boy under the spotlight had clearly lost form and confidence and deserved to be dropped. Sure enough, he failed the next week and then the axe really did fall. ‘I had learnt a lesson,’ Colin admits, ‘perhaps the hardest and one most relevant to life. One must be strong when making decisions which concern other people’s destiny.’

Colin’s detractors would say that he did not always follow his own advice, that he was not always strong as a captain. I cannot comment on that but at least I can say that he had guiding principles. And who of us can say we have always abided by our guiding principles?

If unpopular decisions have to be made, he contends, then it is always a comfort to have allies around you. This might sound like a truism but it is particularly important at county level where a team spends six months in each other’s pockets and tempers can flare. ‘During a season, I had to make numerous tough decisions at Kent.’

One problem grew out of their increasing success and recruitment of better players, some of whom would be on regular international duty. Should an England player be automatically restored to the team on his return, even if his replacement in the Kent side had just played a blinder? Colin’s answer to this conundrum was to try to build a squad system, so that certain players were ‘rested’ from time to time. All very well and good in theory, he discovered, but the reality was that no player wanted to be rested; he always felt that he had been dropped. This is where his manager, Les Ames, and the club coach, Colin Page, played such a crucial role, in helping to smooth ruffled feathers and foster a genuine team ethic, all for one and one for all.

The ideal situation, Colin argued, was for one captain to run his own ship, with help from his lieutenants, of course. In his notes, he cites the example of Stuart Surridge, the legendary Surrey skipper during their years of hegemony of the county championship in the 1950s. First, it is important to point out that a captain does not have to be the best player in the team, though he has to be worth his place. Surridge was no great batsman nor was he more than an occasional bowler, a partnership-breaker. But he made himself an inspirational fielder, close to the wicket, always in the thick of the action. ‘As a striking fielder, he was seen to be a dynamic leader,’ is Colin’s observation, adding admiringly, ‘which was very clever.’

The point is that Surridge had no selection committee; he picked the team, and that was that. It is true that such a wonderfully gifted team that had all bases fully covered practically picked itself but, Colin argues, ‘This really is the ideal situation and the greatest fun for everyone when the team clearly understands that the captain is fully in charge and responsible for his own ship.’ The unspoken validation here is that the reason for the success of HMS England in Caribbean waters in 1967/68 was that there was no argument about who was skipper. Captain Cowdrey was in sole command.

That was not always the case when he captained England. He gives an amusing account, almost a short one-act play, which underlines the problems of a committee picking a team. The scene is set in 1961, when Colin was deputising as captain for Peter May. The team for the first Ashes Test has to be decided:

Scene I

It is in Gubby Allen’s flat, adjoining the grounds of Lord’s Cricket Ground. Allen, chairman of the selection panel, is a lifelong bachelor and the details of even basic hospitality have long escaped him. He is dressed in his dressing gown.

Cowdrey: Good morning, Chairman. Am I early?

Allen: Ah Cowdrey. Eight o’clock, I said, and what time is it?.....Oh, eight, on the dot. Come in.

Cowdrey: Are the others on their way?

Allen: Not ’til nine-thirty. Thought we’d get together first to agree on what side we want.

Cowdrey: What happens, Sir, if they don’t agree?

Allen: Oh, don’t let’s worry about that, my boy. Now, what do you reckon – tea or coffee?

Cowdrey: Tea, please.

Allen: Damn! I’ve only done coffee. I shall have to go and make some.

Cowdrey: Oh no, please. Coffee will do fine.

Allen: Good. Should’ve known you were a tea man, shouldn’t I? Born in Nagpur or somewhere, weren’t you?

Cowdrey: Bangalore.

Allen: Exactly. Enough of the waffle. We’ve got to time these eggs properly. I’m a three and a half minutes man myself. What about you?

Cowdrey: Three and a half will be just fine, Chairman.

Cowdrey, as best he can, tucks into burnt toast, hard-boiled eggs and lukewarm coffee as the nucleus of a team is pencilled in. The doorbell rings. Enter the other selectors, Les Ames from Canterbury, Wilf Wooller from Cardiff and Herbert Sutcliffe from Leeds. All are immaculately attired in blazers and ties. Allen is still in his dressing gown.

Allen: Come in, chaps. Breakfast?

All three in unison: No thanks, Gubby. Had some on the train.

Allen: Good. You all know young Cowdrey? Excellent. Right, down to business. We’ve more or less agreed on the side. Here it is. What do you think?

Ames: Not sure about him, Gubby. I think ---- is a better bowler.

Allen: Les, I told you he would never be picked again.

Ames: Yes, Gubby, but that was two years ago.

Wooller: I see yet again there’s no representative from the Principality. We’ve got some excellent players down in Glamorgan, the equal of anyone on this list.

Sutcliffe: What about -----? Have you considered him?

Allen (aghast): Whaaat? Are you being serious, Herbert?

Wooller: He wouldn’t even get in the Glamorgan Second XI.

Ames: That’s because he can’t speak Welsh.

Allen: No no, Herbert, that’s a ridiculous suggestion. And you know it.

Sutcliffe: Oh, all right, if you say so, Gubby. Anything to keep the peace.

Allen: Now, for God’s sake, can we possibly agree on these 12 names?

Argument rages. Eventually....

Sutcliffe: I’ll have to leave it to you chaps to agree.

Allen: Why?

Sutcliffe: Got to go. It’s one-thirty. My train’s at two.

Allen: But you can’t go now. We haven’t agreed on the 12. We’re still two short.

Sutcliffe: Sorry, Skipper. This meeting has gone on an awfully long time, you know. And I do have a train to catch.

Allen is speechless with anger. Sutcliffe gets to his feet.

Sutcliffe: Anyway, you know my feelings on the last two places.

The doorbell goes. It is Sutcliffe’s taxi. He departs. Allen is rather gloomy.

* * * * *

Scene 2

Leeds Railway Station. Sutcliffe has missed his two o’clock train. It is now early evening and the England team for the First Test has already been announced on the 6 o’clock news. The platform is thronged with newspaper reporters.

Reporter 1: Herbert, Herbert! Yorkshire Post here....

Reporter 2: Mr Sutcliffe, The Times wonders whether you---

Reporter 3: Herbert! The Telegraph....can we quote you on----

Reporter 4: Any comment on the team, Herbert?

Sutcliffe: The team selected, gentlemen, was the unanimous choice of the committee.

Reporter 1: Why did you leave out Close, Herbert?

Sutcliffe: Oh, my God, did we?

The whole point of this pastiche is not to denigrate the characters involved. These men, Colin is keen to emphasise, were not buffoons; they knew their cricket. But committees are unwieldy beasts and he felt happier at Kent, and with the England set-up for a time, when a small, hand-picked and loyal cadre was solely responsible for team affairs and selection. The issue of who is responsible for picking teams has always been a bone of contention at county level, he believed. ‘In successful times,’ he writes, ‘most county committees are content to leave team affairs to the captain and manager. In lean times, the call goes out for a selection committee, which would be totally responsible for picking the XI. We at Kent wanted to change all that.’ And he did. By the time he finished playing, Kent was one of the powerhouses in the domestic game.

The change, slow in coming, at last began to manifest itself in the early 1960s. A gradual improvement in Kent’s position in the county championship reassured the committee that Colin was right; good times were just around the corner. In 1964, they came seventh. In 1965, they came fifth, and fifth again the following year. In 1967, they finished as runners-up to the mighty Yorkshire, the team of the decade, much as Surrey had been in the 1950s.

This was satisfying enough but the real breakthrough came at the very end of the season when Kent won the Gillette Cup, the first piece of silverware in their history. The competition at that stage was only five years old. Philosophy and tactics for limited-overs cricket were still in their infancy; a quick glance at the scorecard will show that this was a world away from the big-hitting run fests of the current game. Nevertheless, Kent won. To compare eras is fun but ultimately fruitless. By winning the cup, Kent had proved they had beaten the best around at the time and the hop-picking county celebrated as only they can.

Lord’s was packed as it always was for the last showpiece of the summer. Kent were up against Somerset. Colin won the toss and elected to bat. Denness and Luckhurst, opening, made a half-century apiece, Shepherd at number three scored 30, and that was about it. From smelling the roses when they were 138/1, they tumbled into the mire, all out for 193. Colin made one.

Kent’s total – and we’re talking here of a time when it was 60 overs a side, not 50 – would have been undefendable in today’s game. But this was 1967, not 2017. Par for the course, depending on the wicket of course, was usually regarded to be between 220 and 230. So, in these terms, Kent were by no means out of it. In fact, they secured victory with comparative ease, dismissing Somerset for 161. Look at these extraordinary bowling figures. Norman Graham bowled his 12 overs for 26 runs and John Shepherd his 12 for only one more. You will be unsurprised to hear that Underwood was the main destroyer, taking 3-44.

The list of previous winners throws up an interesting fact. For the first two years, Sussex, captained by Ted Dexter, were victorious. The following year it was Yorkshire, captained by Brian Close. The previous year, Warwickshire were winners, captained by M.J.K. Smith. So, Colin had been preceded by three England captains, all of whom had been regarded as successful in the role, tactically astute and flexible in their thinking. Who would have thought that Colin would have been among the first to crack the code of this new game and adapt to its peculiar demands? But he was. What were his strategies? What plans did he draw up? How did he put them into action? Yet again, he opens up in the typewritten pages of his notes.

Typically, he did not consider himself physically or technically suited to this particular form of the game. Whether or not he was mentally willing and able to embrace the new format, he remained ambivalent. He recognised its commercial value and enjoyed playing in front of large crowds and a big TV audience but was unsure if he ever really got it out of his mind that it was a bit of a ‘hit-and-giggle’ rather than a serious and technically demanding variation.

He describes in detail a recurring nightmare. It is a Sunday League match of 40 overs in front of a packed Canterbury crowd. The day is swelteringly hot and the game is being televised. Batting at number five, he had scored a hastily and not very elegantly cobbled together 25, composed mostly of scrambled singles, some of which would have resulted in a run-out had the throw hit the stumps. On one occasion, he had to dive for his life, thus covering himself in dirt, and on another, he was hit on the back of the leg by a wild throw as he scrambled for safety.

During the tea interval, he had chewed at a few sandwiches with his leg wrapped in a towel filled with ice.

Now it is time to take to the field. Absent-mindedly – he has just noticed that his sleeves are bloodstained where he had grazed his elbows – he makes his way to his usual position at first slip before a curt word from his captain reminds him that it is a Sunday and of course, there are no slips on a Sunday. He trots off to point, that being the safest place, it had been decided, for the most immobile fielder in the side.

The off-spinner is opening the bowling. He looks mournfully to his left. No third man. There does seem to be an awful lot of unoccupied outfield down there. Sure enough, the batsman plays that extraordinary shot, well, it’s not really a shot at all...what’s it called... oh yes, the ‘reverse sweep’ and damn, it’s running down to third man. With a helpless look around – there’s nobody else within 20 yards – he sets off in hot pursuit. He hopes, he prays, that the ball will beat him to the boundary but drat, it’s slowing up. With a desperate dive, he stops it before it crosses the rope but his impetus carries him into the advertising board, which collapses with a loud clatter. Ouch, that hurt.

He picks himself up – ‘Sorry, madam’ – and retrieves the ball, making sure that both feet are within the boundary. He looks up to locate the wicketkeeper, who has one arm aloft, more in hope than expectation. He hurls the ball in as hard as he can, wrenching his shoulder in the process. ‘Yes,’ shouts the batsman running to that end. He makes it easily as the ball finally reaches the wicketkeeper on the third bounce. They have run five.

And then he wakes up. It is the middle of winter, the log fire is crackling, he sips at his gin and tonic and he wistfully thinks of all those happy years he spent fielding at first slip for England and Kent. In many ways, he comes to the conclusion as he looks back on his career, he would rather have played between the wars. The wickets were, by and large, firm and true, overs were bowled at 20 an hour and runs came quickly. Bowlers targeted the off stump, ‘always looking to attack and bowl people out, with fields set for the catch on the off side’.

The leg side was full of gaps. The best players would have exploited these gaps. ‘Hobbs and Bradman,’ he judged, ‘would never have scored at 60 or 70 an hour without plundering these gaps on the leg side.’ After the war, when he learned to play, more grass was left on the wickets and as a result the quick seamers and the medium-pacers thrived: Trueman, Statham, Tyson, Loader, Bedser, Bailey, Jackson, Gladwin, Shackleton and their own Ridgeway at Kent. There were no easy runs in that era.

The 1960s changed all that. First came the Gillette Cup in 1963, followed by the Sunday League in 1969, and first-class cricketers had to learn how to play a new type of game, as well as maintaining enthusiasm for, and competence in, the traditional longer form. Colin, in keeping with a few others, found the shift challenging. But when did England’s most experienced player ever shirk a challenge? He set himself the task of understanding the nature of the new beast and then taming it. That he succeeded in the first but failed in the second is not ignominious. He had plenty of goodwill in the bank; it was not a huge stain on his reputation. We can be thankful that he applied his instinct for forensic analysis, allied to his vast experience, to give us a personal insight into one-day cricket.

The advantages, as he saw them, were many, some obvious, some less so. Cricket was in the doldrums at the time and needed an injection of something new, something exciting, something fashionable, ‘trendy’ in the parlance of the time. Limited-overs matches, completed in one day, with a winner and loser, was just the ticket for a new generation growing up in a world that was rapidly changing.

If the 1950s were in black and white, the 1960s were in garish technicolour, and limited-overs cricket seemed to embody all that as much as miniskirts, bell bottoms, long hair and the Beatles. Although it is hard to conjure up a mental image of Colin wearing beads, a tie-dyed tee shirt and jeans, he was not so reactionary as not to recognise the new game’s potential. As a financial boost, it was unquestionable and long overdue. It brought in the crowds, ‘and who does not thrill when performing in front of a full house?’

There were new skills to be learnt and perfected. Fielding improved in leaps and bounds, rather too literally for his less than svelte frame but he marvelled at the athleticism of the modern player. He had one caveat though. He cringed when he saw opening bowlers flinging themselves around in the field and risking injury. ‘I would ban my three strike bowlers from ever diving in the outfield. Saving a run and hurting a shoulder for the rest of the season?’ The cake was not worth the candle.

The revolution in batsmanship was startling, he observed. ‘From the batsman’s point of view, he had to learn three things and this has broadened and improved the art. One: Be alert to playing the ball for a quick single. Two: Improvise to keep the scoreboard ticking over. Three: Learn some “slog shots” so as not to get bogged down.’

He is quite honest in these pages about his inability to adapt to these demands. He occasionally played a cameo innings, which would ‘catch the eye’.

But he knew that was not enough. ‘As I look back, I am rather disappointed with myself for not being quicker to adapt.’ He does not say it but I will for him. That was the way he was brought up, to keep the ball on the ground at all times unless there was a clear opportunity to clear the ropes. ‘I am amazed at how much the ball is in the air nowadays,’ he does remark. He adds a disconsolate admission, ‘If I had played more one-day cricket as a young man, I am sure I would have been a better player.’

He relied on touch and timing, not strong forearms and bigger bats. When his touch deserted him, as it did from time to time, he would have ‘benefitted from being able to give it a bash’. He felt too constricted by his upbringing, ‘I was stuck with a sound technique and a rigid game plan.’

If he was slow to adapt, he was in no doubt that the great players of yesteryear would have coped, indeed flourished, in the one-day game. ‘They would have revelled in it. Grace, Ranji, Hobbs, Compton, Bradman, Worrell, Weekes, Walcott, Headley, Trumper...I could give you 50 more. But equally, I could give you a couple of hundred who would have been totally submerged.’ Where he puts himself in the pantheon is unclear. Modest or simply realistic?

Perhaps this image gives us a clue. He imagines a scenario in a Gillette Cup Final. He comes in at number six with five overs to go. Underwood is bowling. How come? They are both on the same side, aren’t they? Well, this is a nightmare after all. He is bowling over the wicket from wide of the crease with a 6-3 on-side field, pitching the ball at a fair old pace just outside leg and going down. ‘In my first 12 years as an England player, I would have had no idea how to unravel that equation.’ By this time he had already scored 18 of his 22 Test hundreds. That is quite a confession from one of the most gifted, technically speaking, of his era.

What about the bowling? On this, he is unequivocal. The whole point of one facet of the contest has been turned on its head. Bowlers used to try to get batsmen out. Now their only objective is to stop the batsman scoring. In short, their purpose has shifted from attack to defence. Furthermore, an integral part of the game, the draw, has been removed. This meant, in effect, that the art of trying to get someone out, thinking about how to dismiss a batsman, even if the plan might involve sacrificing a few runs, will ‘wither on the vine’.

However, if the stated aim of bowling becomes purely the drying up of run-scoring opportunities, he cites one or two bowlers of his generation, Bedser and Statham to the fore, who would have been a nightmare to chase a total against, bowling at will straight into the blockhole. ‘In these two, you have two bowlers who could do it with their eyes shut all day long.’

In short, what Colin is saying, I guess, is that the great players – bowlers and batsmen – from any era would have had the skill to adapt and prosper. The ordinary players, among whom he seems to include himself, would have had to learn how to play limited-overs cricket effectively, preferably having grown up with it from an early age. That would not have incorporated hours and hours practising hitting the ball correctly on the off side, the leg side being out of bounds and guarded by a barbed-wire fence enclosing a tennis court. There is one last comment, a daydream really, on the subject of one-day cricket. ‘How I would have loved to do what Barry Richards did once to Derek Underwood, stepping outside leg stump and hitting it through the vacant gaps on the off side. The bowler I have in mind is Bob Appleyard, just to see the expression on his face and to render him speechless for the first time in his life!’

Back to more familiar territory, the three-day game. Following their near miss in the 1967 season, finishing second to Yorkshire, Kent repeated the feat in 1968, yet again runners-up to the white rose county. I say feat but to Colin and his team-mates, it felt like a crushing disappointment. In fact, they had won one more game than Yorkshire that season but had finished below them on account of the bonus points system, odd though that might sound. This failure to garner sufficient bonus points was something that the team made note of and committed to memory.

High hopes therefore were not unrealistically held for the next season. ‘Huh, dashed hopes and good intentions,’ said George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? about his career prospects. Colin might well have said the same of the 1969 campaign. He snapped his Achilles tendon and Kent plummeted to tenth place. The two might not necessarily have been directly linked but the loss of their captain and main run-getter cannot have helped. He was undeterred. For him, the pursuit of the county championship had become something of a crusade.

To this end, he worked hard to get himself fit for the new season and in addition, something else stirred his sense of destiny. Kent’s centenary year was 1970. What happier alignment of the constellation of stars could there be than to win the championship pennant on the hundredth birthday of the modern Kent CCC?

Somebody else thought so too. Edward Heath was born in Broadstairs, his constituency as an MP was Bexley and he was a Kent man through and through. He also enjoyed his cricket and was thus invited to speak at the centenary dinner held in Maidstone in January. He did well to make it. At the time he was heavily involved, as leader of the Conservative Party, in skirmishes with the prime minister, Harold Wilson, in preparation for a general election that summer.

And not doing too well, it would seem. The polls were looking bad for the Conservatives; informed opinion had Labour well in the lead. Undaunted, Heath rose to his feet and made this extraordinary, prophetic declaration, ‘If I win the general election, you will win the county championship.’ He elicited a roar of approbation though few took him seriously.

But Colin did. For some time he had been building a team for that very purpose and now he believed all the building blocks were in place. The stars, the game changers, the match winners were there in abundance. Denness and Luckhurst were as fine an opening pair as there was in the land. Asif Iqbal (Pakistan) and John Shepherd (West Indies) were all-rounders of the highest class. In Underwood, he had at his disposal the most destructive spin bowler of the day and in Alan Knott, he had the greatest wicketkeeper-batsman of the age, some might argue of all time.

The trouble was that the Englishmen among them would more than likely be called up for England duty, so would the cupboard look a bit bare in their absence?

Not a bit of it. Colin, and the other members of the ruling triumvirate, Ames and Page, had already identified this potential problem and made sure that they had in place a number of talented reserves, ready to step in and do the business when required. This was sensible planning. It came to pass that five, Cowdrey, Luckhurst, Denness, Underwood and Knott, made 18 Test appearances between them that summer. Some hole to fill.

Colin was not worried. He had singled out three youngsters in particular who were full of promise and who would, he believed, step into their boots and not let the side down. The three he had put his faith in became Kent legends: Graham Johnson, Alan Ealham and Bob Woolmer. The championship, if it was to be won, would not be won by 11 or 12 regulars. It would have to be won with a large, coherent and united squad. Colin was good at making people feel that they were wanted, that they were special, that they belonged, that they had a role to play.

To find out more, I sought out Graham Johnson, whom I knew from our playing days, not well but well enough from 22 yards. He was kind enough to share his memories of that eventful season and the part played by his captain. ‘I remember bowling to Kipper in the nets when I was a trialist, a kid really, sometime in the mid-1960s. He hit one back at me and I attempted to stop it. “Don’t do that,” he said. “You might hurt yourself.” Anyway I was taken on the staff. The trouble was, I wanted to go to university. So I approached Colin and explained my dilemma. “I’m building a team here,” he said, “and I want you in it.” Very flattering.’

But knowing you, I guess you were undaunted. You went to LSE, didn’t you? ‘I did, with his blessing. But he told me that any spare minute I had, the deal was that I would play for Kent.’ And there weren’t many of those, considering all the demonstrations you had to go on. He had the decency to laugh. ‘I was on half a salary, which was fair enough. By 1970, I had graduated. It was my first full season.’ How did you find Colin as a captain? ‘I knew none better. He was great with individuals. He made young players like me feel very important.’

It wasn’t only young English players who basked in the glow of Colin’s affable personality. One West Indian and one Pakistani were to become household names in Kent on account of his powers of persuasion. On 25 February 1965, a young all-rounder made his first-class debut for Barbados at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown against the International Cavaliers. He took 1-54 and 1-57, scoring 22 and 33, a reasonably satisfying performance but hardly one to set alarm bells ringing in opposition dressing rooms.

However, the captain of the Cavaliers took note; something in the young man’s enthusiastic demeanour had caught his eye. After the match, he sidled up to him and engaged him in friendly conversation. The upshot of their chat was that John Shepherd would travel to England that summer and join Kent. Colin had secured his man.

In 1967, Pakistan were touring here and one of their warm-up games was at Canterbury. A young Asif Iqbal opened the bowling, without much success, it has to be said, but batted well in a partnership with his captain, Majid Khan, scoring 44 at number seven. Colin again watched with an appreciative, critical eye. He had been informed by Les Ames that Asif, whom Ames had seen play in a schoolboy side over here in 1963, was a useful prospect.

For the moment, Colin reserved judgement. He was to get a further look at Asif later that summer. In the third Test at The Oval, Asif, still opening the bowling by the way, and reasonably successfully on this occasion, scored a majestic 146, this time batting at nine! The measure of his achievement was that the next highest score in the Pakistan innings was 17. Single-handedly, Asif had saved his country from humiliation, if not defeat.

Colin’s mind was made up. He was not alone in beating a speedy path to the Pakistan dressing room door. Several other counties were also sniffing around.

I was fortunate enough to be able to ask Asif about Colin’s influence on his Kent career. He was as obliging as I had been led to believe. ‘I first visited Kent in 1963 with a Pakistani Eaglets side. I managed to get a few runs and take a few wickets. I remember talking to Majid Khan, who was also on the tour, and telling him it would be nice to play county cricket in England, especially for a county like Kent. When an England under-25 side, captained by Mike Brearley and managed by Les Ames, came to Pakistan, at the end of the tour, Les casually mentioned to me that he would like to see me playing for Kent.’

And then Colin spoke to you after the Test? ‘We had a chat and it didn’t take long for me to be persuaded to play for Kent.’ And how was it when you arrived? ‘Well, it was a long way from home and the thing most difficult to come to terms with was the weather. The games played in April were not much fun and many a time I found myself wishing to be in front of a log fire rather than on a cricket field.’ A not unfamiliar tale. I don’t think I have ever met an overseas player who has not had similar first impressions of an English spring. However, Kent warmed up, both metaphorically and literally. ‘Everybody at Kent bent over backwards trying to make me feel at home.’ And nobody can say that Asif did not repay this generosity of spirit – in bucketfuls.

The trick of captaining a county side, or at least, one of them, I always felt, was to galvanise overseas stars in early season conditions, such as Asif describes. Nothing can dampen the spirits and undermine collective enthusiasm more than an unwilling overseas player, or worse, two of them, hanging back as everybody else takes the field, desperate to remain in the warm fug of the dressing room for a few more precious moments. It is hard not to sympathise with them, their having just jetted in from warmer climes, but come on chaps, this is the start of the new season, when it’s all going to change and this time we’re really going to make our mark.

The best, the most emotionally sensitive of the overseas players, recognised this and got stuck in straightaway. Shepherd and Asif were of this ilk. The triumvirate of captain, manager and coach had recognised this; you expect your principal players to lead from the front and that is what they did. What of Colin as the team prepared for the centenary season? Was he greatly in evidence during pre-season practice? Derek Underwood chuckled when I brought this up. ‘Dear old Colin. His preparation was laughable, really. He was not one to hit the gym, that I can tell you.’ But pre-season training wasn’t like that in the Middle Ages, was it? ‘That’s true. But he wasn’t a regular netter. Nor was he one for cross-country runs or anything like that.’

Many a time in the writing of this book have I tried to imagine Colin in one situation or other. Here’s one more. The captain flogging himself up and down the hills of the High Weald at the head of his troops? No, neither can I. Graham Johnson rushed to his leader’s defence. ‘He was there at nets all right.’ But then he laughed. ‘Mind you, that’s only because they were doing a TV piece about Kent’s prospects and the cameras were present.’

Lest anybody runs away with the idea that Colin was a bit of a dilettante, above the tedious exertion of training and practice, I should point out that this was far from the case; it was just that he did things differently, something that as an amateur, he was perfectly entitled to do. Christopher says that he was no great netter, like, say, Tom Graveney, but he would go in there and work on a particular element of technique that he felt needed fine-tuning. Once he was satisfied, out he came. For one thing, he preferred to remain fresh and keen. Too much practice dulls the brain, he believed. And another thing, he did not want to become too ‘grooved’ in his strokeplay. The thing was to remain still and alert at the crease, ready to play what’s in front of you rather than the shot you have been rehearsing for half an hour.

It was the same with his fielding. Derek Underwood mentioned that he was a surprisingly agile fellow for one who did not look terribly athletic. ‘He was a big man but a fantastic catcher,’ he whistled in admiration.

But even the most fantastic catchers drop the odd one from time to time. David Kemp made an interesting observation on this point during the course of our conversations. ‘If he’d dropped a couple – which didn’t happen very often – he would stop off at my house on his way home. “Come and throw some balls at me,” he would say. Which I did, for an hour. First the right hand, then the left. When he was satisfied, he would call it a day.’

This chimes with James Graham-Brown’s story about Colin hauling him out of his house to bowl at him – well, to throw at him, from 18 yards – in the nets, privately and alone and away from the madding crowd, after Andy Roberts had broken his jaw at Basingstoke. In short, Colin had worked out what was best for him and he stuck to it. Cricket has never been a game of one size fits all.

Talking of size, I tackled Christopher about his father’s weight. Nowadays, they have bleep tests and calipers to calculate body fat percentages. If you don’t measure up, you’re out. So was your father ever concerned about his weight? ‘You know, once or twice he went on a diet. But it never seemed to work. When he started to lose a bit of weight, he said he felt uncomfortable and unbalanced, as if his strength had ebbed away. I think that was just the way he was built.’

I’ve seen pictures of Colin after he had been ill and not long before he died. He had lost weight and he looked drawn and emaciated, not himself at all. I believe that a sportsman, specifically a games player rather than an athlete, has his natural weight and body shape. Colin was a bit pear-shaped but my goodness, could he caress a cover drive.

On 16 June, Edward Heath was handed the keys to 10 Downing Street, much to many people’s surprise. Colin, by contrast, far from having one hand on the championship trophy, found himself with his other hand holding a wooden spoon. As June slipped into July, Kent were at the bottom of the table. Had they been a football team, by now there would have been panic in the boardroom, the manager would have been sacked and a real fear of relegation would be gripping the team.

I wondered what the mood was like in the Kent dressing room at the mid-point of a season that seemed to be going catastrophically wrong. I sought the opinion of Graham Johnson. ‘Look, this may seem a bit odd to say but we didn’t think we were playing that badly. We’d been a bit unlucky and not quite done the business but we weren’t a bad side. In actual fact, although we were bottom, there was not that much of a points difference between top and bottom. All we needed was a couple of wins to kick-start our season.’

Nonetheless, you were bottom. It cannot have been comfortable propping up the rest of the table. So what happened? He said the turning point came after their dismissal from the Gillette Cup by Sussex on 8 July. It wasn’t so much that they had lost but the manner of their defeat – a lame capitulation, by all accounts – that dismayed and rankled. ‘We had a couple of days off and a meeting was called for all the staff, to clear the air.’ Whose initiative was that? ‘I can’t remember whether it was Colin’s or Les’s. It doesn’t really matter. The point is that we all knew that something had to be done.’

Les Ames led the discussion. ‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a discussion, not at first anyway. Les really laid into us. Voices were raised and it got a bit heated,’ said Graham. I understood. I have been in dressing rooms when tempers have flared; the only surprise was that it didn’t happen more often. ‘But once people had got one or two things off their chest, things settled down and we began to analyse more calmly.’

The outcome of that meeting was to change the course of the season. ‘There was no magic wand waved,’ Johnson maintained, ‘but we felt we needed to believe in ourselves. We’re better than this, we told ourselves. Let’s be more positive and get ourselves up the table.’ Apart from a renewed sense of purpose, one or two concrete strategies were agreed. ‘We felt we’d been too passive. We needed to be more aggressive, especially in our hunting down of bonus points. That was something that made all the difference by the end of the season.’

Another resolution was that there should be a greater emphasis on team ethic rather than individualism, always a thin dividing line in such a game as cricket. ‘Well, there is no game like cricket, is there?’ he grinned. ‘Anyway, someone made the point that our B team had been more successful than our A team. Should the Test players simply walk back into the side when they came back from international duty when the reserves were playing so well?’ And the upshot of that dilemma? ‘We all agreed that the strongest side should be picked for each game, no matter whose nose was put out of joint. That collective spirit was crucial and saw us through to the end.’

The transformation was remarkable. It was as if Lord Nelson had paid them a morale-boosting visit and re-issued his famous instruction before the battle of Trafalgar, ‘No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.’ And blow it to pieces was the unspoken command. That is precisely what Captain Cowdrey and his troops proceeded to do. First to feel the brunt of a Kent broadside were Derbyshire. The match was drawn but ten bonus points were accrued, mainly through explosive batting. The die was cast. There was no going back. Hampshire and Sussex were beaten and the slow but inexorable climb up the table had begun. As so often happens in these situations, confidence was now flooding through the team.

The epithet ‘flooding’ I used advisedly. Pay heed to this tale of a professional cricketer’s lot at the time. At the conclusion of one match at 6pm – at Lord’s against Middlesex, on this occasion – the Kent team clambered into their cars, negotiated the Friday rush hour traffic through north and west London and headed off to the West Country to play Somerset the following day. With minimum hold-ups and a following wind, that journey is a long one. With torrential storms, flooded roads and several detours, their destination became Weston-super-Nightmare. They arrived at their hotel at 3am. Later that morning – no delayed start to accommodate their late arrival, or anything like that – they lost the toss. It always happens like that. No matter. This team was now equal to anything. They dispatched Somerset by ten wickets.

Graham, I see you were batting at number seven in this game. Yet three weeks earlier, you were opening the batting – and scoring a hundred. ‘Positions in the batting order were not really fixed,’ Johnson replied. ‘We were a team of all-rounders so we were pretty flexible.’

Weston-super-Mare to Cheltenham is an altogether easier journey but not for Colin – he had to make the return journey to London, to face the Rest of the World at The Oval. Where he batted rather well, as it happened, top-scoring in the first innings with 73.

Here I shall allow myself a little diversion from Kent’s pursuit of the title. Originally, these matches against the Rest of the World – hastily organised following the cancellation of the South African tour – had been granted Test match status. Then, quite arbitrarily it seemed to most cricket lovers, the authorities saw fit to remove that status. To this day, these matches inhabit a strange twilight category, first-class yes but not Test class. That means that these games are not added to Colin’s 114 Tests and neither is this 73 added to his 7,624 runs.

Before we feel too sorry for him, spare a thought for poor Alan Jones of Glamorgan, picked for the first ‘Test’ of that summer and then dropped, having scored 5 and 0, never to be picked again. So he joined the exclusive band of the ‘one-cap-wonders’. Ah, but no, he didn’t. Having been presented with his England cap, he had it taken away from him. The decision defied logic then and it defies logic today. You play in a five-day match for your country against the finest players in the world, including inter alia, Barry Richards, Eddie Barlow, Rohan Kanhai, the Pollock brothers, Garry Sobers, Mike Procter and Clive Lloyd, and it is not deemed a Test match? Ludicrous.

Colin had other things on his mind than debating the status of the match he was engaged in and the quality of the players he was playing against. In common with the rest of the England team, he deemed these true Test matches, whatever the TCCB decreed – retrospectively. He was worried how his beloved Kent were doing in his absence, down at Cheltenham. He had every reason to be concerned. The pitch was a shocker and the visitors were having the worse of it. All seemed lost. Time for Deadly to rescue his team. Not with the ball, as you would expect – though he did take five crucial wickets in Gloucestershire’s second innings, in addition to his six in the first – but with the bat. Underwood’s 16 not out, in the company of John Dye, last man in, saved the follow-on, which, had it been enforced, would have been curtains for Kent. As it was, they had been set a total of 340 to win.

Underwood may have relished bowling on this minefield but Gloucestershire had to hand Mortimore and Allen, two of the finest exponents of the art of spin bowling, backed up by Bissex, no mean bowler in his own right. Nobody gave Kent a hope. Except Colin. I take up the story of what happened from Asif Iqbal. ‘This was the match on which our chances of winning the championship rested. Make or break. It was a raging turner and I managed to get a few runs. Colin was constantly on the phone telling me he knew Kent would win.’ I just love Asif’s description of his innings as ‘a few runs’. In fact, he scored 109 to steer his side to victory – by one wicket – in a display of supreme confidence and technical brilliance that had even his team-mates lost for words.

I asked Asif about his captain’s qualities as a leader. ‘I think a large part of my development as a cricketer had to do with the faith that Colin put in me. Much of cricket at the highest level is about confidence and nothing gives a player more confidence than to know that his captain believes in him.’ Can you give me more of a clue about his style of leadership? ‘Colin was one of the most outstanding cricketing personalities it has been my privilege to have known during my career in the game. Quite apart from being perhaps the most stylish batsman of his era, he was a terrific human being and a true captain – on and off the field. He cared for everyone and always wanted the best for all his players. Like a true leader, he could absorb pressure like a sponge, never allowing it to go down to his players.

‘He never lost his temper, even when unacceptable mistakes were made on the field and I never remember him shouting at anybody, not even those who came back into the dressing room looking very sheepish after playing a shot that looked, for all money, an imitation of Charlie Chaplin playing cricket.’

Not much that I can add, or needs to be added, to that assessment, other than Asif never played a shot like that.

Although Colin had an intuition that Kent’s centenary year would be the one, he freely admitted there were times during the season when he suspected his optimism might have been misplaced. One who had an almost mystical belief that nothing could prevent Kent from walking away with the championship was Asif. Colin told a good story about Asif and his unshakeable faith in their destiny. Following the narrow win against Gloucestershire, they were taking on Surrey at Blackheath and it was during a fruitful and unbeaten partnership between the two, in which Asif scored another hundred, that this conversation ensued. Colin bemoaned the fact that the season did not go on for a few weeks more, so that they could profit from their recent good form. Perhaps the charge up the table had come too late. ‘No no, skipper,’ Asif countered. ‘We shall win it in our last match at The Oval.’

His conviction was infectious. Before beating Surrey at The Oval in the final match of the season, they had to dispose of them here, at Blackheath. Graham Johnson, together with everybody present, vividly remembers the last ball of the match. It had been another nail-biter of a game.

Set a total of 263 to win, Surrey were always going to chase it down as they too were in with a chance of being champions. With the last ball of the 21st over in the final hour, with time for maybe one more, 12 runs to win, last pair at the wicket, Pat Pocock launched a huge slog off Johnson over wide mid-on. ‘He really connected with it and I thought, hello, that’s going for six. Asif set off from wide mid-on, sprinted all of 45 yards and caught it one-handed above his head. It was one of the most remarkable catches I’ve ever seen.’ Incidentally, Graham, I see that you took 12 wickets in the match. ‘Told you we were a team of all-rounders.’

Now, if the Kent boys believed, after the win against Gloucestershire, that they could win the championship, this astonishing victory convinced many of them that they would win.

But not without further tension and excitement, and a bit of luck, it has to be said. The following week at Folkestone, Garry Sobers hit them from pillar to post and into the English Channel. He eventually took pity on the Kent bowlers by declaring when he was 123 not out, Nottinghamshire on 376/4. Once Kent, in reply, had subsided to 27/5, the game, to say nothing of the championship, was up, according to the folk circling the boundary.

But in this most extraordinary of seasons, there always seemed to be someone who stepped up and took control. On this occasion it was Brian Luckhurst, with an unbeaten 156, who steered the innings to calmer waters, enabling the captain to declare 50-odd runs behind. Now it was Sobers’s time to throw down the gauntlet, something, as we know, he was never afraid to do. He set Kent a total of 282 in two hours plus the mandatory 20 overs in the last hour – more challenging than his gamble in Port of Spain but a fair one, thought Colin. The home side made it, just, by three wickets with a couple of overs to spare.

Beat Leicestershire with a reasonable haul of bonus points in the bag as well and Colin could throw away that spoon and put one tentative hand on the trophy. This they did, by an innings and 40 runs, crucially picking up a king’s ransom of 23 points. The mathematicians in the side did their calculations and assured the skipper that they did not even have to win their final game against Surrey at The Oval to clinch the championship: five bonus points was all they needed.

Graham, I see you scored another hundred in this match, your third of the season. Johnson was keener to talk about the first, earlier on, in June, against Sussex. He’d scored 92 three weeks before and this time as he approached the landmark, his maiden first-class ton, he was naturally anxious. Colin was batting with him as he negotiated the nervous 90s. ‘He couldn’t have been more helpful and encouraging. He kept on coming up to me between overs, suggesting where runs could be got, asking me which bowler I would prefer to face so that he would take the other one, constantly chivvying me and making me concentrate. It was a marvellous moment for me when I made it, with my captain at the other end coming up to shake my hand.’

So to The Oval, scene of many a dramatic denouement to the season in Colin’s career. This was special, however. This was Kent. In a season that had brought acute personal disappointment – the loss of the captaincy to Illingworth for the tour to Australia – he had found returning to his roots, in a dressing room full of friends, a considerable balm to his hurt. Now his team were on the cusp of being crowned champions.

But hold on, was the weather going to provide one final, nasty twist? The rain did eventually relent and play commenced at 2.50pm. To secure the requisite bowling points, Kent had to bowl out Surrey cheaply, and rapidly. Rain was all about and the forecast was not promising. They nearly did, Surrey declaring on 151 with nine wickets down, thus depriving Kent of that vital fifth bonus point, the beastly fellows. In point of fact, that action was quite encouraging, a reassurance that Kent were not going to be handed the title on a plate and that the integrity of the competition remained intact.

The stage was set for Captain Cowdrey to seize his destiny. By his own admission, the pitch, rain-affected, was a pig to bat on but he always relished a challenge and seemed to save his best innings for the times when conditions were at their least favourable. I shall leave it to Graham Johnson to describe it all. ‘It was one of the best hundreds I’ve ever seen him play. We all felt that it was a fitting tribute that he should be at the crease, batting as only he can, when we got the bonus points we needed, putting the destination of the championship beyond reasonable doubt. The Master giving a masterful exhibition of batting. It couldn’t have been more appropriate.’

Did you paint the town red that night, not that it would have been Colin’s style, but did you celebrate? ‘Not truly. You see, we hadn’t actually won anything. Mathematically, it was still possible, but highly unlikely, that Lancashire could overhaul us as they had one more match to play. But they didn’t. So we had our party later, at Number 10.’

At Number 10? ‘Yes, Ted Heath, now the prime minister, invited us all for a celebration at Number 10.’ Did you misbehave in the garden, like the 2005 Ashes-winning team? Johnson gave me one of those looks that he used to give batsmen who had just played a streaky shot off his bowling, as if to say, of course not, we were all better behaved in those days.

Before our meeting drew to a close, he was anxious to share with me his assessment of Colin as a man, away from the public eye and his fame as a cricketer. ‘There were layers to him. Gradually, over time, you would peel them away and come to a place where you really felt you had got to know him. These were the times I treasured, chatting to him after he had retired.

‘I started my career under Colin and finished it with his son, Chris, as captain. He was around a fair bit, watching Chris, and Graham, his third son, playing for Kent, so we had plenty of opportunities to catch up. He helped me with my career at Barclays after I stopped playing. I found he was prepared to open up more. For example, when he became president of Kent – it was after his heart attack – he wasn’t at all well and found the official functions something of a strain. He would sidle up and say, “If I need to slip away, you will make sure everybody is having a good time.” It was as if he was letting you into his closed, private personality.’

I got the impression that the normally granite-jawed, imperturbable Graham was getting a little emotional here. ‘One more thing,’ he insisted. ‘That 1970 team was his. At his memorial service in Westminster Abbey, we were all sitting together. Asif came in, dressed in his Kent blazer. Instead of sitting with the high and mighty, as he was expected to do, as a former Pakistan captain, he came and sat with us. “We’re Colin’s team,” he said. And he was right, we were.’

The loyalty shown towards Colin, both at the time of his death and earlier, when the heat was on, out there in the middle, was genuine and deep. In a way, they were merely repaying the loyalty he had shown them. Colin said, ‘The year of triumph became possible only with the development of a host of good players together.’

The bit-part performers are sometimes overlooked, with the majority of the attention bestowed upon the stars; Colin made sure this did not happen. The foundation of a successful side had been laid down, the young players matured together and, for a while, Kent enjoyed an unparalleled period of success. Under a different captain, of course, but Colin was happy with that. Mind you, he did have this to say about his overseas stars, ‘We could not have done it without John Shepherd and Asif Iqbal.’

One could be forgiven for believing that Colin’s Kent career gently slipped into the twilight thereafter. The following season, he contracted pneumonia halfway through the summer and did not play again until 1972, by which time he had handed the captaincy over to Mike Denness. There was of course that unexpected final tour of Australia in 1974/75 but after that, he decided enough was enough and announced his retirement at the conclusion of the 1975 season.

However, one last milestone still beckoned him. The prospect of scoring 100 first-class centuries hove tantalising into view and though personal targets, as far as run-making was concerned, never really rowed his boat, joining that small, elite band was an opportunity not to be spurned. To date, only 25 batsmen have achieved that target. Jack Hobbs was the first – incredibly, he fell only three short of making it 200 – and Mark Ramprakash the latest, and probably the last, for few believe that anybody will achieve it in the future, the number of games in the season having been severely reduced.

The feat has only ever been feasible for batsmen playing county cricket, there being no such professional set-up anywhere else in the world. The fact that Don Bradman is the only cricketer to have joined the club who has not played county cricket serves to underline his pre-eminence.

As would be expected, nerves set in as the landmark approached. Not just with Colin but his team-mates, Kent supporters and, so it seemed, the whole of England. ‘Everybody knew the significance of the moment,’ James Graham-Brown told me. ‘But no one dared to mention it in the dressing room for fear of tempting fate.’

Maidstone Festival week in late June and early July 1973, Somerset were the opponents and Colin scored 123, his 99th century. Excitement built. He was in good form. Would he do it in the next match, in the second game of the festival, against Surrey? Asif was batting with him at the time. They had many fruitful partnerships together. The respect and admiration they felt for each other was obvious, both great batsmen, though cut from different cloth. ‘They were very close,’ said Graham-Brown, ‘and loved batting together. We called one Master and the other Maestro.’ Which was which? He laughed. ‘I’ll leave you to work that one out.’

Asif’s account of what transpired is rather touching. ‘One of the moments that I will always remember of my association with Colin was batting with him when he got his 100th hundred.’ The last few runs came agonisingly slowly. Finally, he was on 99. Asif went up to him. ‘Wherever you hit it, I will make it,’ he said at the time, later telling me, ‘I was much quicker than Colin.’ That is putting it mildly. Mind you, Asif was quicker than just about anybody in the game. ‘Colin looked at me quizzically and replied, “That’s all very well but what about me?”’ But you made it? ‘We made it.’

It was an emotional moment. Immediately, Denness declared with Colin on 100 exactly and Asif on 119. Graham-Brown described the scene as Colin reached the dressing room. ‘He sat down quietly, not saying a word. Naturally, we all went up to him to congratulate him but then left him alone. He seemed... serene. He knew the significance of what he had just achieved but there was no wild celebration. He looked – he was – physically and emotionally drained. It was as if Anthony Sher had just played King Lear and he had returned to his dressing room and was coming down from playing one of the most intensely taxing parts in the Shakespeare canon. The humility of the man in the immediate aftermath of such a great achievement in the game was what struck me.’

Graham-Brown would not let me go until he had unburdened himself of his own insight into the enigma that was Colin Cowdrey. ‘He got a bit of stick for being an Establishment figure, friends with the great and the good, and all of that sort of stuff. But he never lost the common touch. He would chat to me, an ordinary, run-of-the-mill county pro just the same as if I was a prime minister or the Duke of Edinburgh. I think the people who didn’t like him were the ones who didn’t know him.’

Professional jealousy perhaps? ‘Maybe not so much that as inverted snobbery. People think he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But he wasn’t actually. He was no snob! It is absolute b******s that he would look over your shoulder while talking to you to see if anyone more important had entered the room. He made you feel you were the most important person in the room and that it was a privilege for him to be speaking to you.’

Another less obvious character trait of Colin’s he was keen to highlight was his sense of humour. He gave a couple of examples. ‘It is true – though he was keen to deny it – that occasionally he would toss up on the phone.’ What on earth do you mean? ‘Colin Page told us that once Colin was in a phone booth just outside the Blackwall Tunnel. He had been delayed for some reason and got hold of Ian Buxton, the Derbyshire captain, so they could toss up on the phone.’ On another occasion, Graham-Brown forgets which game, Kent needed 99 to win in their second innings. ‘Colin stood there in the dressing room. “If we all get nine,” he said, “we’ll win!” We lost a couple of wickets and John Shepherd had to go out with a further two runs needed. “Get out there, Shep,” he said, “and get me a quick two!”’

Asif added his two-pennyworth on the same theme. ‘Colin had a great sense of humour. In those days, we used to share the driving and he was deeply impressed with my sense of direction and my knowledge of Kent roads. On one occasion, while I was ploughing our way through traffic, following my directions, he mumbled, “Never thought in my life I would be shown the way to Kent grounds by a Pakistani taxi driver.” I told him it was a sign of changing times. He gave me another of his quizzical looks.’

Colin was to score another seven hundreds before he called it a day. The final one probably gave him as much satisfaction as his first. It is given to few top-ranked sportsmen the opportunity to sign off with your loyal public on a triumphant note. What better occasion for your last hurrah than Kent v Australia at his cricketing home of Canterbury? The match was towards the end of June during that sweltering hot summer of 1975. On the final day, Kent had been set an improbable target of 355 to win, having been rolled over in the first innings for 202. So confident of an easy win was the Australian captain, Ian Chappell, that he ordered the team coach to be ready outside the gates at 3pm, in the hope and expectation that they would get away early and avoid the Bank Holiday traffic on their journey along the south coast to Southampton.

‘But I was given a last memory to savour,’ Colin wrote in his notes. ‘In the last 20 overs, we eased home to a famous victory by four wickets.’ His memory uncharacteristically lets him down here; he is full of praise for Bob Woolmer’s unbeaten hundred. In fact, well though he played, Woolmer scored 71 not out. The victory owed everything to a wonderful innings of 151 not out by Colin. He remembered that all right. ‘It was one of the best innings I have ever played. The Australians were generous in their unexpected defeat. Ian Chappell found it within himself to clap me on the shoulder and say, well done.’

Far from avoiding the traffic, the Australians did not reach their hotel in Southampton until past midnight. They didn’t look too bad on it though the next morning when they took the field against Hampshire. They did for me all right; I was bowled by Ashley Mallett for 12.

And that was it, pretty well. Colin finished his career with a first-class average of 42.89, rather lower than you might expect. A quick glance at the records of the other 24 with 100 hundreds to their name underlines this surprising statistic. Only Tom Haywood, of Surrey, has a lower average, of 41.79, and he played in a different century, second to the milestone after the great W.G. Grace in the pre-First World War era.

So why has Colin, comparatively speaking, got such a low average? If nothing else, his presence in this august company is a tribute to his stamina and longevity but surely he was a better player than this. One clue, I believe, lies in the fact that he rarely went on to make big scores, what Graham Gooch used to term ‘daddy hundreds’. If we leave aside the famous 307 he made against South Australia on the 1962/63 tour of Australia, there are no double hundreds and few in excess of 150. He scored 107 centuries and 231 fifties which is not a very impressive conversion rate.

How come? He was aware of this conundrum as much as anybody and gives it some thought in his autobiography, ‘Most of my best innings have been fused with some problem or adversity.’ The unspoken assumption is that if there was not a great deal resting on his innings, he often found it hard to motivate himself. Scoring runs merely to boost his batting average gave him no pleasure whatsoever. What satisfaction was there in scoring a double hundred against weak opposition? He cites the fact that he never scored a hundred against Leicestershire or Glamorgan who had, at the time, moderate attacks at best.

He admits that he got out too often once he had scored 50. ‘I used to relax and try to experiment or to practise a particular shot and get out.’ Alan (A.C.) Smith told me a good story about Colin on this very topic. ‘Warwickshire were playing Kent at Edgbaston. Colin was 105 not out at tea. After tea, I expected him to open out and play a few shots. In fact, he seemed to go into his shell and was barely able to hit it off the square. I sidled up to him. “What’s up, Colin?” He looked surprised. “Nothing. It’s just that I’m experimenting with a new grip.” Extraordinary!’

The point, I think, is that he was not greedy for runs. He reminds me very much of Barry Richards, who should, by his own admission, have scored many more than his 80 first-class hundreds. ‘Jeez,’ he said. ‘The number of times I got out in the 70s or 80s because I got bored and hit it up in the air.’ Vintcent van der Bijl told me that he would put his life on Barry scoring 50 but his money on Graeme Pollock scoring a hundred once he had passed 50. ‘GP was run-hungry in a way Barry never was. He would never give his wicket away.’

It was the same with Colin. Sometimes, he did give his wicket away, through carelessness or lack of concentration. He needed the stimulus of competition, the thunder and smoke of battle, the man-to-man confrontation of bowler and batsman. A good bowler, that is. ‘I was never a run-gatherer,’ he says, ‘like Bradman, Barrington, Sheppard, May, and Boycott of the current generation.’ A.C. Smith puts it in a nutshell. ‘Colin a great batsman? Not quite. In my view. Peter May was the best. Now there was a tough nut. Ted Dexter was the best against the best, if you see what I mean. Colin was... enigmatic, almost as if he could not quite believe how good he was.’

By now, questions of how good a player he was, whether he had been the best he could be, were academic. He belonged to the ages. ‘I look back on that sunlit day at Canterbury,’ he wrote, ‘with fond recollection. It was now time to bow out.’