After cricket 1976–2000
‘Keep cricket a happy game.’
Colin Cowdrey’s message from his hospital
bed to MCC and their guests at the bicentenary
celebrations at Lord’s in 1987.
IT happens to all professional sportsmen. The time might be of their choosing, it might come unexpectedly, too early, or it might have come, on reflection, a little too late. But it is never welcome. For cricketers, the end comes with a wrench of particular savagery. I have long pondered the reason for this. After all, a cricketer retires at an age not a great deal older or younger than any other sportsman. So why have so many cricketers confessed to difficulties in adjusting to ‘civvy street’, with a distressingly large number, in statistical terms, who have subsequently taken their own lives? What is so different about cricket as a career?
The answer lies, I think, in the nature of the game. It takes up so much time, in fact, all of your time. Not only that but when he was at home, he wasn’t really, because he was playing cricket every day, often away. So it would not be unreasonable to assert that cricketers spend more time with their team-mates than they do with their family. In fact, the team becomes a sort of surrogate family and the dressing room more comfortable and embracing than anywhere else, a cocoon protected from the rest of the world. Then, suddenly, that protective cloak is stripped away and ‘who will then stand upright when the harsh winds blow?’ as Thomas More said.
For Colin, the time was of his choosing – Thomas More enjoyed no say in the timing of his – and you would expect no less, given his record and length of service. However, the question of what to do with the rest of his life was no different than for any other of his colleagues coming to the end of their careers. It was not as if he had not been pondering it for some time. When a cricketer reaches his late 30s and early 40s, as he was, thoughts of retirement intrude willy-nilly. His initial leaning, just as it was at the end of his school career, was towards teaching, well, schoolmastering, if I can make the distinction.
It is not clear from his notes what subject he would teach. He just thought he would slip easily into common room life at a school much like his own Tonbridge, running the cricket in the summer term and coaching rugby and rackets during the winter. What school could possibly turn him down? But then he got distracted. ‘With the captaincy of Kent, playing for England (sometimes as captain), I became rather blinkered as to what I was going to do next.’ Before he hung up his boots, he was made many offers from companies and businesses to come on board ‘but a couple of Kent victories, a satisfying hundred, selection for another England tour, and I forgot about them’. It was not until he had achieved the milestone of his 100th hundred that ‘the shutters of my mind were opened and the prospect of working in the City became more attractive’.
There was one further distraction, the unexpected call-up to Australia on the 1974/75 tour, before he really sat down and took stock. It was an old school friend who opened the door to the City, enabling him to explore the workings of merchant banking, insurance, Lloyd’s, and other financial institutions. The trouble was, he discovered, he knew next to nothing about the City and how money worked. His contemporaries who had followed this career from school were now well up the ladder of success. He would have to put his foot on the first rung. He claimed to be fascinated by the inner workings of stock broking and the like but I am not sure how genuine the appeal was. He said the same about the retail trade when working for his father-in-law but everybody knew where his heart truly lay.
Staying at Kent, in some administrative capacity or other, was not an option. The year following his retirement, his eldest son, Christopher, joined the staff and it was clear he was set, at the very least, for a successful county career. Colin decided it were best to keep his distance and let Chris develop at his own pace and in his own style. Having the surname Cowdrey was burden enough without having his father queering his pitch. Colin judged that discretion was the better part of valour and vowed to keep his distance.
Soon after returning from his sixth and final tour of Australia, he was invited on to the board at Whitbread, the brewing company. ‘Following the Packer Revolution in the late 1970s,’ he wrote,’ it was obvious we needed an influx of good young players to replace the ones who had been, or might be, snatched by World Series Cricket.’ He and the chairman of the company had a little chat over morning coffee – the way you do – and the upshot of their conversation was the formation of the Whitbread Scholarship Scheme, designed with the specific purpose of sending three or four talented youngsters overseas in the winter, to learn their trade and mature as future professional cricketers. ‘I am pleased to say that among the first beneficiaries were Ian Botham, David Gower and Mike Gatting,’ he announced proudly.
Before Colin’s career as the City’s answer to Gordon Gekko had taken off, he found himself on the front pages, not of the Financial Times but of all the tabloids. For one who fled a posse of reporters outside the Lord’s pavilion at the age of 13 and who harboured a lifetime’s distrust of what his son, Chris, called gutter journalism, as opposed to the true cricket reporters, with whom Colin had a warm relationship, the experience must have been excruciating.
However, it was not a good day to bury bad news nor was it the sort of story that could be hidden in a short paragraph on one of the inside pages. In 1978, it was announced that Colin Cowdrey was leaving his wife after 22 years of marriage to live with Lady Herries, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. His family, his friends, his former team-mates, the folk of Kent and indeed the whole cricket fraternity, were shocked. David Brown, who had bowled his heart out for Colin on that successful tour of the West Indies in 1967/68, probably spoke for everyone when he told me, ‘Kipper? He was probably the last one we expected to get divorced!’
In many ways, this chapter of Colin’s life was the one I least looked forward to chronicling, the one I would rather not have had to write. Not because it inevitably casts a shadow on his reputation but because it cast, and continues to cast, a shadow over other people whose story this is not. The fact of the matter is that Colin divorced his wife and remarried. It happens. The reasons for the separation were no doubt as complex and as impenetrable as in any relationship and little is to be gained, in my view, in digging around in the dirt to find evidence to blame one party or the other. I would have preferred to make mention of it and move swiftly on. But it became known, it was in the public domain and it provided food for thought, among his friends as well as the intrusive press, about the enigmatic and private personality of one of England’s most recognisable sporting figures. It was, like it or not, newsworthy.
The effect on the family can only be imagined. All four children, Christopher, Jeremy, Graham and Carol, dealt with the emotional upheaval privately, and in their own way. Their wish to be spared the harsh glare of publicity is understandable and should be respected. Penny was devastated; that much was obvious to everybody. ‘She adored Colin,’ David Kemp told me, ‘and the whole family was knocked by the divorce. It was a very, very difficult time for everyone.’ As the wife of the club captain, she had been very much in evidence at Kent while Colin was still playing. Then two of her sons joined the staff and being the extrovert personality she was, it was always unlikely she would quietly fade into the background.
Nevertheless, Colin must have had his reasons. Kemp, a fair and even-handed man if ever there was one, tried to make sense of the conundrum. ‘Much as he loved her – and I believe he truly did – he found her difficult to control sometimes. She was, how can I put it, quite highly strung and what he wanted above all was peace. His life was stressful enough, an England player always in the public eye, and he hated all the attendant fuss and brouhaha. For example, when Illingworth was chosen ahead of Colin to take the MCC team to Australia, she was incensed. “Illy’s got it!” she cried and rushed to Colin’s defence. She felt he needed her support. The thing is that he didn’t need it and didn’t want it. He just wanted the whole sorry business to disappear. They were two completely different personalities. Perhaps his new wife, Lady Herries, and the world she inhabited, gave him the tranquillity he craved. Who knows.’
I plucked up courage and asked Christopher whether he felt that his father, towards the end of his life, had found peace. He paused and gave it some thought, ‘I think so. I hope so.’ Obviously a lot of water had flowed under the bridge and time seemed to have healed most of the old wounds, as it had with all of Colin’s children. They were in close touch with him right until the end and I got the sense that, if they believed he had let them down and betrayed their mother, later exposure to life and all its vicissitudes had softened their judgement and calmed their spirits. After all, the four of them have met with personal unhappiness themselves and that tends to put a different perspective on things.
‘Don’t forget,’ Chris reminded me, ‘that Dad had a heart attack in his late 40s, followed by a triple bypass.’ Indeed that was so. ‘He’d gone to see a specialist,’ continued Kemp, ‘who had told him he had a dicky heart and he needed to ease off and take things more gently. But Colin could never say no, so I am not sure there was too much easing off there.’ Kemp went on to tell me that Colin got a lot of stick for his actions in the press, especially when it later emerged that he was going to marry the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter. He must have sensed my puzzlement. ‘Why? Because he was the premier earl of England and a Catholic to boot. The most important family in the realm, aside from the Royals, was committed to a religion that forbade divorce.’
If the relationship between man and wife is private business, the role of parenting is perhaps fairer game for analysis, if only because nobody knows a father better than his children and we have, in the course of this book, been trying to unravel the paradox at the heart of Colin Cowdrey. ‘Penny was a wonderful mother,’ said Kemp, ‘but Colin adored his children. He was a good father but found the marriage... difficult.’
The reason for this, he maintained – and on this, just about everybody I spoke to agreed – was undoubtedly his upbringing. For seven years of his childhood, at the most formative stage of his life, he had no parents. Thus he had no model on which to base, for better or worse, his own experience when the time came. ‘He didn’t really know about parenting,’ said Chris. ‘He was never there. Not his fault but that was the way it was. He was a bit naïve like that. He thought if you played sport then everything would be fine. He never asked how my work was going at school, for example.’
Chris then told me an amusing story, one that he had recounted at his dad’s memorial service. Mother and father had just received the dreaded call from son’s headmaster of his prep school, Wellesley House, requesting their presence at a meeting to discuss Chris’s less than impressive academic results. ‘I was playing a footie match,’ Chris remembered, ‘just as they turned up. It so happened we had won 5-0 and I had scored all the goals. After the game, Mum and Dad came over and I was told to get in the car, obviously for the parental bollocking. There was silence. Then Mum said, “Go on, Colin, say what you were going to say.” Dad turned to me. “I particularly enjoyed the second goal, the near-post header. I loved the way you caught it just right.” Mum was furious with him. But that was it, you see. Sport solved all problems.’
Paradoxically, the divorce and Colin’s marriage to Lady Herries brought Carol closer to her father. ‘Lady H wasn’t one bit interested in cricket,’ she told me. ‘In fact she was totally unsociable. All that interested her was her horses. So, for all these cricket functions that Dad attended, I was his date.’ No doubt deputed to keep an eye on him – his health was not good by now – she relished the role. ‘I was what, 18 or so, and I had a whale of a time, meeting all these interesting and famous people.’ She too had an amusing story about her father. ‘Chaddy! He was the duke’s chauffeur and he adored Dad. When we had to go to Lord’s or wherever, Chaddy would arrive in the car to pick me up. Except he would be sitting in the passenger seat.’ So your father would drive? ‘Oh yes, every time. He was very old by now, Chaddy.’
I was about to ask her more of her memories of her father but she got there first. ‘I want to stress this. Dad taught me, an impressionable young girl, how to behave. I don’t just mean how to hold a knife and fork but how to treat people. For example, when he was at Barclays and we’d walk into the building, not only would he recognise Fred and remember his name, he would stop to have a little chat. “Now, how’s your wife?” he would ask. “Last time I spoke to you, she hadn’t been well.”
‘It was little gestures like that. People would always come up to him and say, I remember when you scored that hundred at such-and-such a place and Dad would answer, “Ah, yes, the wicket was wet, wasn’t it? And we’d just followed on.” And so on. Nothing was too much trouble. That was the lesson of life I learnt from my father – how to take time and trouble with people.’
I had a long conversation with Jonathan Smith, the English master at Tonbridge School when all three Cowdrey boys came under his wing. Apart from his successful career subsequently as a writer and playwright, he has a great love and knowledge of the game of cricket. His son, Ed, played for Kent and Middlesex and for England in three Test matches against South Africa; following his retirement from the game, Ed is now an author and commentator on Test Match Special.
Initially, I wanted to talk to Jonathan about the effects of Colin’s divorce on the boys. He was Chris’s tutor for the five years he was at the school and he also taught Jeremy and Graham English. ‘For the period of roughly 1970-80, I saw a fair bit of the family. Yes the divorce was awkward and we all had to scramble around, hiding the newspapers that had awful things said about their father. Graham was the worst hit, I think. He’d just come to the school and was at a vulnerable age when you really don’t need to be dealing with this sort of thing.’
However, Smith was eager to move on. Clearly he found talking about someone else’s domestic problems as uncomfortable as I did. It soon became evident that he knew and understood Colin well but in a completely different context from cricket. ‘I saw him a lot around the school and at cricket matches on the Head. He was a great chatter. He would pass no one without a hello and a word or two. He was utterly without arrogance or self-importance. “Hi, I’m Colin Cowdrey,” he said to me when I first met him, as if I didn’t know. “I hear you’re taking on my son. Good luck!”’ How was he as a parent? ‘He worried about the boys, as any parent does. Frequently, he would ring up and we’d discuss their progress, though I sensed he was more concerned about what scores they were getting on the cricket pitch than in the examination room.’
As a dramatist himself, Smith was drawn to the comparison as a performer between an actor and a cricketer. Both are entertainers in the broadest sense and are expected, on a daily basis, to go out there in front of their audience and strut their stuff. ‘Cricket can unman you,’ he said. ‘You are in the spotlight and all your frailties, your weaknesses are exposed to the public gaze. And often you fail.’
Although Colin was an essentially shy man, who did not enjoy the pitiless scrutiny of the national press, he was, regardless, a public figure, recognised wherever he went. ‘That was why Tonbridge was so important to him,’ Smith insisted. ‘It was a steadying influence in his life, even after he left. There was nothing he enjoyed more than walking into a hall of 200 boys and talking to them about cricket. He was a great raconteur. He had them in the palm of his hand. The way he would play the crowd, as it were, as he walked around the school or the boundary...he had a special touch, leavened by a lovely, self-deprecating sense of humour.’
Smith also compared Colin’s charisma with the great actors he had known. ‘Out there, on stage or in the middle, nobody can touch you. You feel safe and in control, doing what you do best. Like all great performers, there was a certain aura that surrounded him. So, although he was shy off the pitch, he must have enjoyed the limelight, playing those marvellous innings in front of those large crowds. He was no wilting wall flower, was he?’
And what of Lady Herries? She was a racehorse trainer, her relatively small but successful operation based in Angmering Park, near Arundel. The two were married in 1985 and of course she became Baroness Cowdrey when Colin was ennobled in 1997, but she chose not to use the title, being a peer already in her own right. By all accounts, the union was a happy one. Colin was pleased to support her business and her passion, though he knew little of horses himself. Former England team-mate David Brown found himself rekindling his friendship with his captain and his new wife through their shared occupations, he as a breeder and she as a trainer of racehorses. ‘I saw a lot of Kipper at race meetings. We got on well and would natter on for hours once the races had finished. Presumably he knew what he was letting himself in for when he went to live with her. I think he enjoyed playing second fiddle to her in an environment away from cricket, where he was always the central figure.’ Lady Herries had no interest in the game and, either by design or choice, kept well away from Colin’s world.
Ah, but what was Colin’s world now? I have waded through armfuls of letters in his files, replies mostly from friends, friends of friends and friends of them too, politely exploring possibilities of gainful employment, obviously set in train by Colin after his retirement. Which correspondence bore fruit?
One morning, I was walking back from the shop in our village, having just bought a paper, when a car pulled away from our neighbour’s driveway. I noticed out of the corner of my eye the driver and immediately did a double take. Was that Geoff Arnold, the same Geoff Arnold who had given me a little insight into the Illingworth tour of Australia in 1974/75? Indeed it was. Apparently he is a good friend of one of my neighbours in the village, Ray Jepp. It transpired that Ray, now retired, had been Arnold’s bank manager. I paid him a visit. ‘Colin Cowdrey!’ he exclaimed when I told him about this book. ‘Knew him well. We both worked for Barclays.’ Hastily I fetched my notebook and settled down to mine this rich and wholly unexpected source of Colin’s later life.
‘It was Sir AFT!’ he cried, once I had located a pen. I beg your pardon? ‘Sir Anthony Favill Tuke, chairman of Barclays. He loved his cricket, you know. President of the MCC, wasn’t he?’ Sir Anthony Tuke was president of MCC 1982/83, succeeding Hubert Doggart. He was also chairman, successively, of Barclays Bank 1973-81, of RTZ (the acronym refers to the merged companies of Rio Tinto and Zinc Corporation) 1981-85 and of the Savoy group of hotels 1984-94.
He was no great sportsman himself but was an enthusiastic sponsor and enjoyed nothing more, Jepp told me, than watching a Test match from the Barclays box at Lord’s or The Oval. ‘I met Sir Anthony by chance,’ wrote Colin in his notes. I bet it was not quite as serendipitous as that. However engineered, the association became a happy and profitable one for both parties. ‘Basically,’ Colin continued, ‘I became a travelling representative for the bank around the cricket-playing globe.’ No doubt doors opened for him wherever he went.
‘Colin knew everybody,’ said Jepp. ‘And everybody knew Colin. Look, he would ring up the governor of the Bank of England... now, what was his name? Oh yes, Leigh-Pemberton, Robin Leigh-Pemberton. He’d ring him up – and of course, he was put straight through – to ask whether he was free to come to Lord’s for this or that function. And it would go straight in the diary. Colin was a sort of PR man, excellent at bringing people together for their mutual benefit.’
What was your connection with him? ‘I was a branch manager at Barclays in Kennington.’ Next door to The Oval? ‘Yes indeed. I knew Micky Stewart through amateur football. He introduced me to the lads at The Oval and eventually I found myself looking after the personal accounts of 23 out of their 24 players.’
Apparently, it was part of Colin’s duty to look after the branch managers and assist them when they were entertaining clients at sporting venues, particularly cricket matches. ‘I’d be with Micky Stewart at The Oval for lunch at a Test match and head office would say, we’d better get Colin down so you can talk about cricket. I had a job to convince them that all cricketers were not thick and that Micky, being a very intelligent bloke, could talk about any number of things, including stocks and shares.’
Thank you, Ray, for defending the IQ of cricketers. ‘You’re welcome. I met Colin loads of times and I found him an absolute gent, a very nice man. He would be walking around Lord’s, accompanied by the high and mighty, and he’d spot you in a crowd and always make a point of coming up to greet you. He made you feel you were the most important person he’d met that day.’
What was that story you were telling me about Len Hutton? ‘As you know, Colin was very fond of Len. He said he had looked after him in Australia when his dad had died. Anyway, as I lived nearby, Colin asked me to pick up Len to give him a lift to Lord’s. You just stop me, was my reply. Len Hutton was a great hero of mine. Anyway, after that, I became his regular chauffeur.’
So, once more, Colin’s knack of bringing people together had got a result. ‘I should say so. For the bicentenary dinner at Lord’s, Colin came up to me to say that Len was the guest of honour but he couldn’t come unless I picked him up. Could I do it for him? I said I’d do it for myself! Colin made sure there was an invitation for me too.’
I guess he didn’t have a desk or anything. ‘Oh yes he did. He had a desk in head office. And a secretary. He was there, really, for who he knew. He was an excellent front man. He was a good face for Barclays. He had great clout for someone who never had a job in his life.’ At which, Ray Jepp roared with laughter. ‘Well, not a real job,’ he added, ‘not like the rest of us, nine to five, Monday to Friday.’
I asked Ray whether he had met Penny. Or Lady Herries. He shook his head. And then told me a story, which was clearly his wont. This was one that was printable. ‘Look, you know as well as me that cricketers are usually doing one of two things in the dressing room, either reading The Sun or ringing up a bird to fix that evening’s entertainment. But Colin wasn’t like that. He was no womaniser. We were at a lunch in head office on one occasion. We gave him a lift back to Sloane Square afterwards. When we had dropped him off, my friend looked at me and said, “I can’t believe that bloke has had two wives. He just doesn’t seem to be the type.” Colin was such a nice and personable fellow. So modest. No side to him at all.’
Barclays had strong connections with South Africa (controversially), Zimbabwe and Kenya and was beginning to open up close contacts in Australia and New Zealand. In all these countries, Colin was probably the best-known face in the whole company. He records in his notes his particular pleasure in liaising with MCC over sponsorship by Barclays for cricket tours of East Africa. ‘I like to think my influence helped a little to enable these visits to take place.’ He saw his role thus, ‘I played two parts. My first was a walk-on part, listening and absorbing the details of how a large bank like Barclays worked. My second was at the forefront of the stage as an international cricketer and an ex-England captain.’
He was often called upon as a guest speaker at special dinners or occasions and at this, according to just about anybody who knew him, he was a past master. I use the term deliberately. It originally referred to one who has held the office of worshipful master of a guild, club or society. As we shall see shortly, Colin was elected Master of the Skinners Company, which of course founded his alma mater, Tonbridge School. He was as well a master of the spoken word.
Here are the assessments of three of many who should know.
‘Colin was adept at all the social graces,’ said A.C. Smith. ‘He was a brilliant off-the-cuff speaker. He never spoke too long, he always pitched it just right and invariably hit the nail on the head.’ Alan Dowding knew him well and listened to him often. ‘He spoke fluently, without notes. He was brilliant at remembering people in the room and making the necessary references to them.’ Hubert Doggart was a headmaster and they usually know a thing or two about public speaking. ‘Colin was warm, relevant, easy on the ear and aspirational for all potential, as well as existing, cricket lovers.’ I could go on but I think the point has been made. Colin knew how to turn a phrase.
In his notes for the unpublished book, I came across a chapter entitled ‘On Your Feet’. Eagerly, I seized upon it, intrigued as to whether he was going to expound on batting or fielding at slip. But no, it was wholly devoted to speech-making. Immediately, he makes this astonishing admission, ‘I’ve always been terrified at the prospect of having to rise to my feet and say a few words.’
This from a practised exponent of the art. He says that it was a skill he learnt; it was not something that came naturally. He ascribes his diffidence to his upbringing. As a child, ferried from pillar to post with nowhere he could call home and in environments where he was expected to be seen and not heard, he thought it best to keep his mouth shut.
Likewise, when he first entered adult dressing rooms. They were not places of peace and quiet. By and large, they were populated by characters whose wit and speed of repartee he could only admire. He makes mention of John Warr and Doug Insole as having the gift of oratory combined with humour, and of course Fred Trueman, who was famous as a great story-teller with a photographic memory. His best turn, Colin insists, was a set piece in cod Chaucerian English, which he could deliver at the drop of a hat, word perfect, with not a gesture or intonation out of place. Colin believed he could never compete with that. Who could? Trueman was a natural comedian. But with practice and one or two tricks, Colin reckoned that most people could turn themselves into a reasonable performer.
He goes back to his first, disastrous attempt to say a few words in front of an audience. As head boy at Tonbridge, he was invited to the annual OTs dinner, at which he was expected to make a speech. ‘After one or two initial strokes, I simply couldn’t lift the bat. I froze. My mind went blank. The chairman recognised my plight and asked aloud, “What sort of year has the school had in sport?” I got my confidence back and spoke for a few minutes without my notes and the audience seemed to come alive.’ Everyone gave him a sympathetic round of applause as he sat down but he had learnt his first lesson, one he never forgot.
Thereafter, he claims, he never went in to bat, so to speak, without these three tricks up his sleeve:
‘1. On the menu card, write out in capitals a couple of subject headings with the first sentence. Just in case.
‘2. If you are next to anybody standing up to speak, have one or two relevant topics written down to help him out if needs be.
‘3. Follow Winston Churchill’s advice. Try to use words of one syllable if possible. Don’t bore them with two words where one will suffice. He did his homework. Make sure you do yours.’
Colin was obviously a fan of Britain’s wartime leader. ‘His best impromptu speeches were carefully prepared. Nothing was too much trouble to Winston when it came to fashioning English composition.’
Of all the fine preachers he listened to in his life, Colin names two of the most inspirational. ‘Lawrence Waddy, my headmaster at Tonbridge, was a superb preacher, after-dinner speaker and lecturer. Another was Billy Graham, the evangelist whom I heard preach at Oxford. He began with four of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard. Then, having warmed up his audience, he warmed to his task. He was an extraordinary orator.’
The most difficult speech to make, Colin tells us, is what he terms the ‘five-minuter’. This was the one that he was called upon most to deliver, at cricket clubs, dinners and in his roving commissions for Whitbread and Barclays. ‘I was often asked to “talk cricket” for five minutes or so and all this practice helped when I was appointed chairman of the International Cricket Council.’
Some critics unkindly hinted in their obituaries of Colin that his work for Barclays was largely inconsequential and incidental. He does not tackle head on this assumption, if ever he got wind of it, but he does claim in his notes, ‘Ten years immersed in varied interests and concerns, meeting a wide range of people, led to three unexpected positions of responsibility. In 1985, I became the Master of the Skinners Company. In 1987, I was invited to become president of the MCC in its bicentennial year. And in 1989, I was elected chairman of the ICC, a post I held for four years.’
Far from frittering away his time in retirement, he was now embarking on what many regard as the most profitable and influential period of his life. Even his detractors admit that he rose to the occasion.
First, the Skinners. The company developed from a mediaeval trade guild of the furriers, who dressed and traded furs. In those times, furs were very much a luxury item and their use strictly controlled. It was a part-religious, part-trading organisation and was one of the first guilds to obtain a royal charter, from Edward III in 1327. Thus they go back a long way, further even than MCC. As their wealth and influence grew, it became possible for their members to set in train various philanthropic ventures. One of these was the founding of schools. Their first was Tonbridge School in 1553.
While I was teaching English at Malvern College, one day I encountered our headmaster in the common room. I noticed the unusual tie he was wearing. It seemed to be raining the numbers six and seven. That’s an interesting tie, Headmaster. A cricket club, perhaps? He gave me a withering look. ‘I am very surprised, Mr Murtagh, as a member of my English Department and as a noted wordsmith, that you are unacquainted with the phrase “to be at sixes and sevens”.’ Actually, I was acquainted with the phrase though not of its origin but I felt it politic not to argue. The use of my surname did not bode well. He might have been joking but you never know with headmasters. ‘Well, let me tell you.’ I felt a history lesson coming. I waited patiently. He was after all a history teacher. ‘You’ve heard of the Lord Mayor’s Show?’
Yes. After the Lord Mayor’s Show. ‘There had been a long-running dispute between the Skinners and the Merchant Taylors and it came to a head during the Lord Mayor’s procession of barges down the Thames in 1484, when both guilds disputed the right to be number six during the procession and who should be relegated to number seven. Violence erupted but the Lord Mayor at the time came up with the inspired compromise that they should take it in turns each year. And to this day, we still do. Hence the term “to be at sixes and sevens”.’
It was as if the scales had fallen from my eyes. I knew that Hugh Carson was an Old Tonbridgean. He never stopped reminding me of their prowess in the Cricketer Cup. Tonbridge was a Skinners school. Colin had always been a loyal servant of their old boys’ cricket team, for whom he never failed to turn out, when county commitments did not intrude. He played for them for many years after retirement, ‘But never as captain,’ David Kemp told me. ‘He preferred to be just one of the boys. He didn’t want to hog the limelight or throw his weight around. His enthusiasm for the Cricketer Cup set the tone for the OTs’ success.’
When you think about it, considering his enduring affection for Tonbridge, with its Skinners connections, the former head of school and England cricket captain was an obvious choice to become their Master. He accepted with humility and delight. Besides, he probably had more furry sweaters in his possession than all the furriers in the guild put together.
Now, Hugh, I wonder if you could outline for me the function and responsibilities of a Master of the Skinners Company. This was asked of my former boss many years after our retirements from teaching, with a glass of wine in my hand on this occasion. It was after he had served his year as Master in 2011 and was intended as a lead up to my exploration of Colin’s year of office. ‘It’s a bit like being a headmaster,’ he told me. ‘You need to be able to handle people and try to get them playing to their strengths and not worry too much about their weaknesses.’
And Colin was good at that. ‘Indeed. He had vast experience of handling people in his job as captain of a county team and his country. He had all that in spades. But more than that, he was a good man. By that I mean a true Christian. He wanted to do good. And you must realise that the Skinners is a charitable organisation. Its raison d’etre is to do good. That was why he was such a marvellous Master.’ Colin’s team-mates who referred to him as Master got there before the Skinners.
I am not sure that Ernest Cowdrey was an emotional man but I should imagine that even he, had he been alive, would have felt a frisson of pleasure as the news emerged that the son he had so presciently christened Michael Colin Cowdrey had been appointed president of MCC. The year was 1987, the 200th anniversary of the founding of that great club. It seemed so apt, so right, that Colin’s presidency should coincide with the bicentenary; nobody could fulfil the role as honourably and as diligently as he. The price he paid, however, was grievous.
He regarded the honour as the pinnacle of his career and was determined to make a success of it. The appointment is routinely for one year and the question I was keen to discover was what influence can be brought to bear in such a short space of time when more permanent officers at the club – secretary, treasurer and other officials – were more familiar with the corridors of power and where they led.
For this, I sought the aid of Roger Knight, a former secretary and president. ‘It’s a strange hybrid really. The president is the top man but the day-to-day business is done by the permanent staff. As president, you can play it how you want really. You can get involved in the politics or you can play the role of figurehead.’ Colin could have played it safe and confined himself to meeting and greeting the dignitaries from around the world at Test matches, celebratory dinners and the like. He would have been very good at it.
But he chose not to. He was at an age when he felt comfortable at throwing off the shackles of caution and self-doubt. There was business to be done and he knew it. For one who had been criticised as a captain for dithering, there was no sign of that immediately he took up office. He proved himself to be an able and dynamic leader at a time when cricket found itself at a major crossroads. Radical changes were required from a body not exactly known for innovation. Accompanying his noted charm and powers of persuasion was now added a steely resolve, which quite surprised those who had known him a long time. The cricket world was changing and if his beloved MCC were to survive as anything other than a charming relic of a bygone age, he needed to get a grip, and swiftly.
‘There was turmoil at the club,’ Alan (A.C.) Smith told me. He should know. In the spring before Colin took up office that autumn in 1986, he had been appointed secretary of the Test and County Cricket Board. ‘There had been friction between the MCC and the TCCB for years ever since the control of the domestic game had been removed from the MCC and handed over to the new body, the TCCB, in 1968. It was felt that the governance of the game in England should not be in the hands of a private members’ club.’ Mike Vockins, who was the secretary at Worcestershire at the time and knew his way around the MCC, remembers the period as ‘a tricky time’. He continued, ‘You would have thought that the MCC and the TCCB, both splendid organisations which had the good of the game at their very heart, would have been hand in glove. But the relationship was not as close as it ought.’
He went on to tell me with an amused chuckle that one secretary would communicate with the other by mail, ‘even though they were housed in the same building!’ I then made mention of the resignation of the club’s secretary, Jack Bailey, which caused a furore at the time and still manages to ruffle feathers today. Did he jump or was he pushed? The answer to that largely depends on whom you talk to. Vockins furrowed his brow. ‘We’re talking about events that happened 30 years ago. I don’t really remember. What I do remember is that Colin walked into a difficult situation, saw that something had to be done and acted quickly and decisively.’
It seemed that Bailey understood that the two bodies had two different agendas and believed fervently he should protect the rights and privileges of the club he represented, therefore keeping the TCCB at arm’s length. A considerable number of the club’s members were in agreement with him. At the heart of the dispute was that the TCCB ran Test matches but the MCC owned Lord’s. So who was in charge when Test matches were played at HQ? It was, quite simply, a power struggle.
Whether Colin had a direct hand in Bailey’s resignation remains unclear. ‘Things did settle down,’ said Vockins, ‘as they tend to do. The Colonel [Lt Col John Stephenson] took over and relations between the TCCB and the MCC became more harmonious.’ Alan Smith agreed, saying this about Colin’s influence on affairs, ‘That is why I saw Kipper’s appointment as a good thing. He was a conciliator and I felt sure he would help to smooth over any friction. The thing with Jack...well, I don’t know. All I know is that Colin dealt with it.’
For a thoroughly impartial view, what better source to consult than Wisden? The bicentenary year was meant, and organised, to be a fitting celebration of the durability and prestige of the famous old club, one that Colin loved and was honoured to serve. There was much to look forward to.
‘Sadly, the year was not always blessed,’ went the editor’s notes to the 1988 edition of Wisden, ‘not even for the Marylebone Cricket Club in its bicentenary year. Concerned at what they felt was an encroachment by the Test and County Cricket Board on their rights at Lord’s, the club’s premises, a group of members voted at the Annual General Meeting in May not to accept the club’s Report and Accounts. There were also calls for the resignation of the President, MC Cowdrey. The dissatisfaction of those members had been prompted by the resignation of the Treasurer, DG Clark, the previous December, and the early retirement in January of the Secretary, JA Bailey. At a Special General Meeting at the end of July, the Committee received by a large majority the support of the Club’s members but they had been reminded of the importance of proper consultation and communication in today’s world.’ It was, the editor admitted, an ‘unhappy episode’.
My guess, having got to know Colin well, I believe, in these pages, is that this ‘unhappy episode’, coming during his presidency and at a time which should have brought him pleasure and pride, must have hurt him deeply. It was not meant to be like this, with a fractious membership, ancient quarrels stirring, the premature departure of the secretary and the treasurer, a testy AGM, the annual report not being passed and journalists outside the Grace Gates sharpening their pencils. It was meant to be a festival of cricket, not a hotbed of politics and recrimination.
I sought the opinion of Colin’s old friend Hubert Doggart, who took over the role of treasurer at the club at this epochal moment in its history. ‘History. What a caper!’ he cried. ‘Soon there will be nobody left who remembers what happened during a difficult period at the club 30 years ago.’ He then made this poignant observation about Colin’s year in office, ‘No president could, surely, have had a sadder presidency.’ Without taking sides – indeed he was at pains to steer a middle path, something as an ex-headmaster he was uniquely qualified to do – he wanted only for me to understand the effect that such complications had on Colin, who could see no complications in cricket. Cricket was a game to be loved and cherished, not to bicker over.
It was clear from our conversations that Doggart had a huge affection for Colin. Their friendship went back a long way. Doggart saw the relationship as a partnership of sorts but one of equals. They both captained their respective universities, Doggart skippering Cambridge in 1950, Colin Oxford in 1954. Both incidentally had a future England captain playing under them; Doggart had Peter May in his team and Colin had Mike Smith. There was an extraordinary synchronism in that encounter in 1954 when they played against each other. Doggart was captain at Sussex and his team were playing Oxford at The Parks, captained by Colin. They both scored 140! They had been on that MCC missionary tour of the West Indies, managed by E.W. Swanton, ‘binding the Commonwealth together’ as it was termed.
They were drawn to each other, finding their temperaments, especially in their love of cricket, to be entirely compatible. Later they partnered each other at the amateur doubles in rackets at Queen’s, in 1958 and 1959. They went in to bat together at a Special General Meeting of MCC in 1983, to speak against the motion to send a touring side to South Africa during the apartheid years. Colin would not have wanted to speak, Doggart said, but his persona, reputation, knowledge and standing within the game were such that he was persuaded otherwise. The motion was defeated in the Hall, even before the postal votes were counted, Doggart told me with evident relish.
And now this. At the AGM in May 1987, when the annual report and accounts was not accepted by the membership, Colin looked shocked. He went for a decision review, long before the technology had been invented, and called for another vote. The motion to accept the report was defeated for the second time. Swiftly he brought the meeting to a close. He had no option. But the report had to be passed at some stage otherwise the club would descend into anarchy.
A Special General Meeting was called, this time at the Central Methodist Hall, Westminster, more of a suitable venue than the crowded Long Room at Lord’s. On this occasion, wiser counsel prevailed, the more vociferous critics were outnumbered and the annual report was accepted, by a whopping 80 per cent majority. The president must have heaved a sigh of relief. He did, but he was not in the chair. He was in a hospital bed, recovering from a triple bypass operation, necessitated by the first of his heart attacks. The meeting was chaired this time by the club treasurer, none other than the aforesaid Hubert Doggart.
Privately, Hubert and I mused over the strain Colin must have been under during these difficult months and how much it might have contributed to his heart attack. The only conclusion we could possibly come to was that it cannot have helped. We agreed that it was a sad climax to Colin’s career – not that he was no stranger to personal disappointment – but more importantly, it could have spoiled what was intended to be a festival celebrating a special birthday of a special club. In fact it did not, though Colin’s absence from the two stellar, pre-eminent events, the dinner in the Guildhall and the match the following day, MCC v Rest of the World, was keenly felt. How he must have gnashed his teeth in frustration at missing all the fun.
Characteristically, he sent a message to the Guildhall diners from his hospital bed, ‘Keep cricket a happy game.’ They did. The celebrations and the match at the centrepiece of the whole thing were a resounding success and for this Colin gave full credit to Hubert, who stepped into his shoes and fulfilled the president’s role with energy, competence and aplomb. The bicentenary year was a private disappointment but a public triumph.
After the Lord Mayor’s Show... The ancillary to this celebrated saying is not so well known. After the Lord Mayor’s Show comes the dustcart. One might have expected at the conclusion of his year’s presidency that Colin would have retired quietly to Angmering Park, to watch the gallops and recover from his heart operation. Not a bit of it. His diplomatic skills were required at another place, which also needed an urgent makeover.
The Imperial Cricket Conference – the name says it all really – was set up in 1909 to govern world cricket and comprised only three members, England, Australia and South Africa. It was renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965 to reflect its wider membership but, according to Colin, ‘It had no teeth,’ amply illustrated by its impotence in the face of the Packer Revolution and the introduction of World Series Cricket. ‘So, for ten years it had stagnated,’ wrote Colin in his notes, ‘not strengthening its position. What it needed was a chairman who could travel the world, consult with the cricket-playing boards, and put in place a proper governing structure with adequate financial support.’
Traditionally, the chairman of the ICC was the extant president of MCC. Thus, in 1987, Colin had chaired meetings of both establishments. This was clearly not a good idea. For a start, that person would change every year and continuity became impossible. Furthermore the president/chairman had a foot, uneasily in Colin’s case, in both camps. Thus, the leadership of world cricket lay in the hands of a man who had not been elected but had been nominated by his predecessor, in whose gift the appointment lay. Colin set about exploring means by which the two roles and therefore the two governing bodies could be detached from each other.
Times were a’changing and credit must go to Colin for recognising this and, what’s more, doing something about it. ‘Basically,’ A.C. Smith told me, ‘the ICC were expected to look after the minnows in the world game, the Hollands, the Canadas, the Argentinas, while the MCC were in charge of the Test-playing countries. The ICC needed to become independent, just like the TCCB, and run world cricket. Colin was just the man to supervise the passing over of power, to make the transition as smooth as possible.’ And did he succeed? ‘Yes he did. You see, everybody liked and trusted him. Why, he even got the Indians onside!’
In 1989, when he took up the chairmanship of the ICC (renamed the International Cricket Council, to reflect the changed nature of its governance), Colin was no longer president of MCC. The two roles had been separated.
He was not entering the lion’s den blindfolded; he was aware of the huge task that lay before him. Whether it was a good idea for a man not in the rudest of health was a moot point, he was not about to shirk this challenge, whatever his doctors advised. And, like the planner he was, he sat down and drew up a synopsis of the problems confronting him. It is neatly laid out in his notes.
There were three areas of major concern, he judged. The first was: slow over rates; continual interruptions in play; short-pitched bowling; bad behaviour and confrontational attitudes; loss of respect for umpires; sledging; the demise of spin bowling; the need for an international panel of umpires and referees. Much of it sounds all rather familiar, doesn’t it?
The second uncertainty was commercial. The ICC needed to act as a central body independent of its member boards. It depended on the charity of the richer members to function. It was crucial to develop its own source of income and sustainability. The ICC still had its offices at Lord’s. The move to Dubai was yet a pipe dream. To that end, the search for sponsorship and advertising revenue needed greater emphasis. Colin saw the rights to the World Cup as crucial in this regard.
The third gridlock was political. When was it ever not? Colin was aware as anyone that South Africa’s isolation, necessary as it was, ‘cast a dreadful shadow over the health and prosperity of the world game’. Hand in hand with that thorny bramble went the proposed invitation to the top table of Test cricket for Zimbabwe (who were opposed to any contact with South Africa) and Sri Lanka (who were in the middle of a civil war). There was also the continued refusal of India and Pakistan to play each other and the enveloping financial crisis afflicting the West Indies. What perturbation! How he must have wished for the powerfully reassuring presence of Les Ames at his side.
Unsurprisingly, the commercial and political details of the job interested him less than the cricket, though he argued in his notes that all three were interdependent. More than anything else, he was becoming increasingly ‘fed up’ with the belligerence displayed by players under the bogus justification of professionalism and competitiveness.
Quite possibly, his distaste for unnecessarily aggressive behaviour on the field of play had come to a head during his last two tours Down Under. Certainly, he had no rapport with Illingworth’s hard-nosed brand of captaincy in 1970/71 and what he thought of being called ‘fatso’ by Jeff Thomson on the 1974/75 tour can only be imagined. But this was not personal. He observed a trend and he abhorred it. The game was becoming professional; that he endorsed and applauded. Then why should the players not behave professionally? If they did not, why were there no means to ensure that they did?
Sledging was a new phenomenon, one that he had never before encountered. Personal abuse directed at a batsman? It just never happened. ‘The ground rules of good manners and a proper spirit of sportsmanship seem to have been abandoned overnight.’ He put the blame, and the responsibility, firmly in the court of the captains. He quoted the Laws of Cricket, which state perfectly clearly, ‘It is the responsibility of the captain at all times to see that the game is played within the spirit of the game as well as within the laws of the game.’ What part of that sentence could possibly be open to interpretation, he reasoned. ‘Yet captains are abrogating their responsibility,’ he thundered, in so far as it was possible for Colin to thunder.
In addition, what Colin referred to as ‘the flow of the game’ was exercising him greatly. He recognised that limited-overs cricket had caught on in a big way, in spite of his earlier misgivings, and was encouraged by that. ‘A wider and sometimes quite new audience has been opened up,’ he wrote with enthusiasm. However, he feared for the future of five-day Test matches and three- or four-day championship cricket. ‘I travelled the world in my capacity as ICC chairman and met boards,’ he wrote, ‘and the possible scenario that the days of Test cricket were numbered came as a douche of cold water.’
This was at a time when West Indies, with their tactic of employing four fast bowlers delivering a relentless barrage of short-pitched bowling, operating at the funereal pace of 12 overs an hour, were sweeping all before them. People were being turned off by the tedium of the spectacle. Slow over rates, the preponderance of fast, short-pitched bowling and the paucity of spin bowling were ‘unacceptable’, in his opinion, and were ‘shining an amber light on the future of Test cricket’.
There was another headache but this one he makes no mention of in his notes. I doubt that he would have publicly admitted it anyway because it was brought on by the ceaseless pestering of a man he knew well and had come to respect enormously. If I say that man was none other than the great Sir Don Bradman then you might appreciate the cleft stick in which Colin found himself.
Who in the world of cricket, with the possible exception of Sir Garry Sobers, was more celebrated and honoured than The Don? Notwithstanding his incomparable exploits on the field, he had carved out for himself an eminent niche in the administration of the game, particularly in his home country of Australia. In short, when Bradman spoke, folk tended to sit up and take notice. Including Colin. Bradman had been kind and well disposed to him whenever they had met and they had struck up a warm friendship that endured to their deaths, coincidentally within two months of each other.
But Bradman clearly had a bee in his bonnet. Once it became public knowledge that Colin had been appointed chairman of the newly constituted ICC, and was therefore now a major player on the world stage, Bradman, believing he had the chairman’s ear, proceeded to bend it, remorselessly. When you have waded through dozens of Bradman’s letters to Colin, as I have, all written in his small, neat hand, banging on about his pet subject, you would have demanded not one tablet but a packet of paracetamol.
What was the bone of contention that exercised the mind of the greatest batsman in the history of the game? The back foot law. Not wishing to teach grandmother how to suck eggs, I shall endeavour to explain briefly Bradman’s concern. The no-ball law used to be determined by where the bowler’s back foot landed in relation to the return crease, the line adjacent to the stumps. If the back foot landed behind the crease, the ball was legitimate. The problem was that some bowlers, usually of the fast variety, tended to drag their toe across and beyond the crease, in effect delivering the ball several feet nearer the batsman. Some of the photos from that ill-fated MCC tour of Australia in 1958/59 (the generation of the ‘chuckers’ and ‘draggers’) showed bowlers with their front foot way in front of the popping crease. An unfair advantage, cried horrified onlookers and irate batsmen.
The worst offender was Gordon Rorke; so exaggerated was his drag that he actually was delivering the ball from 18 yards. ‘If I’d played forward,’ observed Colin at the time, ‘I would have been standing on his foot.’
In 1963, the law was changed. Henceforth, if a bowler’s front foot landed beyond the popping crease, that constituted a no-ball. To me, and to anybody else who has been brought up knowing no other, that seems to be an eminently sensible and logical law. After all, it applies to most sports. If you serve at tennis with a foot on the line, it’s a foot fault. If you hit the board in a long jump, it’s a no jump. If you intrude beyond the white line of a football pitch for a throw-in, it’s a foul throw (or should be). A javelin thrower must not overstep the line even if his momentum carries him over subsequently.
A certain leeway is allowed for a bowler in that he can cut the line but not overstep it but the principle is the same. However, Bradman strongly disagreed, partly for technical reasons but probably because the old law had stood for over a century well enough so why change something that didn’t need fixing? He lined up his sights on Colin and bombarded him with letters.
Attentively solicitous and ever cordial, Bradman always begins with the customary civilities and polite enquiries after the health and well-being of Colin, family and friends. Having had news of Colin’s heart attack, he writes, ‘Had a letter from Gubby [Allen] telling me you’re OK. Great news. Just take it quietly for a while.’ Congratulations are extended on a recent England win, ‘Well done on England’s fine win in the Test match against West Indies. It was not only good for England, it was good for cricket. The breaking of West Indian domination will have favourable consequences at all levels of the game.’
It is not long before he gets down to business. Obviously, he sees the chairman as a guiding rather than disinterested presence in committee and urges Colin to make use of his influence, ‘As chairman, you are charged with a neutral stance. I believe you also have a bounden duty to make your convictions known. Your prestige as a person and former distinguished player is such that it is right for you to influence matters.’
What Colin’s convictions were we do not know, as I am in possession of only Bradman’s letters, not Colin’s replies. No doubt they are among Bradman’s papers but it is not hard to imagine that Colin kept his convictions to himself, if indeed he had any on this less than pressing subject. His job, he saw, was to gain consensus from a widely divergent and notoriously quarrelsome committee of board members on matters of more immediate concern than the back foot law.
But Bradman was not so easily put off and renewed the campaign. ‘I hold the view, rightly or wrongly, that by and large the cricket law makers are too complacent.’ He nudges Colin in another letter, ‘I’ve been thinking of this back foot no-ball law and hope you are making progress.’ Not enough, clearly, because in a later letter, he says, ‘Whilst naturally I am a little impatient and frustrated at the delay in full consideration being given to my back foot proposal, I do understand that no law of cricket should be hastily altered without full consideration.’
After a while, patience starts to run out. ‘Right now you have people who do really have a deep seated feel and appreciation of the problem being in danger of getting outvoted by people whose knowledge is 1 out of 10.’ After further stonewalling, as he sees it, the tone of his letters becomes more strident. ‘I confess to be totally frustrated. ..Is there no progress at all?...This matter is crying out for revision.. .If such a wide and knowledgeable group of people such as Richie Benaud, Colin Egar and Ian Chappell are in agreement with me, why is my voice not being heard?’
If that were so, and I have no reason to believe it was not, it must have been the only occasion in their long and bitter relationship that Don Bradman and Ian Chappell were in agreement. What hurt Bradman more than anything else, I sense, was that he felt he was being sidelined, something that had rarely happened to him before. He complained at being cut dead by Peter May and being fobbed off by Donald Carr when the subject of the back foot law was brought up. ‘It seems to me that so long as Peter May, Doug Insole, Donald Carr and others sit pat and refuse to listen to reason, the game of cricket will continue to be saddled with this monstrously stupid law.’
The law was never changed. There was no appetite to do so. As far as I know, it was not even discussed. I presume that Colin deflected the tricky deliveries from his old friend with a dead bat and judicious use of the pad, much as he had defied the wiles of Ramadhin at Old Trafford in 1957.
Bradman was without doubt a powerful and persuasive figure in the cricket world but he was notoriously thin-skinned, a complex and highly driven man, obsessed by detail and not a little consumed by his own self-importance. Not given to close friendship, he remained loyal to those who gained his trust, not least of whom was Colin. He was for example fulsome in his compliments to Colin on the news of his knighthood. And his civility never let him down, even after the dismay at not getting that law changed. ‘I hope you’re not finding the exertion of the job too taxing. Jessie was 82 on Monday and sends her love.’
Nor was his competitive instinct on the wane, it seemed. There was always news of his golf. ‘Still on 11. Played this morning and did the last nine in 38. Not bad for an ageing 79.’ And who cannot, if not warm to, then at least commend, someone who takes the trouble to write this? ‘So glad you are on the mend but please don’t overdo things too soon. Look after yourself. Warmest regards. Don.’
If the back foot law did not make it on to the list of ICC priorities, drawn up by Colin at the outset of his chairmanship, how fared the others that did? In short, was Colin a success in the job? The general feeling, I believe, is that he was the right man in the right place at the right time. First and foremost, he managed to secure the independence of the ICC from the MCC and any of the national boards of control. ‘The appointment of Colin was a masterstroke,’ Alan Smith believed. ‘He was a key player in making this happen. No one could have done it better than he. And for this, he must take a lot of the credit.’
Regulation was put in place that a minimum of 15 overs an hour should be bowled, with appropriate fines doled out to teams failing to meet this requirement. ‘For the most part,’ Colin was pleased to report to the council in 1992, ‘this has been achieved by everyone, with just two instances of fining to date.’ The principle of match referees had been adopted and his opinion was, ‘The presence of the match referee has acted as a deterrent, so providing protection of the umpire and helping to restore his authority and status.’ Bad behaviour on the field, aggressive conduct and unacceptable sledging ‘have been reduced but the umpires will continue to keep a rigorous eye on this’. The appointment of neutral referees had been agreed and thereafter, in Test matches one of the two umpires would be ‘neutral’. I thought all umpires should be neutral but the word was taken to mean ‘not from the home team’s country’, as used to be the case.
Of course, in Colin’s view, this was no more than a stop-gap measure. He wanted to see in place an international panel of umpires, wholly independent and responsible for the officiating of international matches worldwide. The Elite Panel of ICC Umpires did not come into being until 2002 but a start had been made. In the meantime, he encouraged board members to give much thought to ‘this complicated and controversial subject’ and looked forward to the day ‘when the financial climate improves and sponsorship is forthcoming’. He did not live to see that day but he had set in train the impetus to bring it about.
It has been my opinion, and that of others I have consulted, both within the game and interested onlookers, that behaviour on the field of play, both at international and first-class level, is, on the whole, acceptable and greatly improved since the bad old days when Colin’s career was coming to a close. ‘The problem is not in the professional game,’ John Holder, the former Test umpire told me, ‘which is, by and large, properly policed and effectively enforced, but in the recreational game, where behaviour is, frankly, appalling.’ Colin would have been shocked at that. As was I. As would anyone who laboured under the naïve belief that cricket was a game to be enjoyed. MCC are currently much concerned about this and are taking sensible measures to deal with it. Colin’s remit was not the recreational but the international game and the introduction of match referees, neutral umpires and a closer watch on player behaviour all came into force on his watch. As A.C. Smith observed, the credit was his.
The concerns over too much short-pitched bowling and the demise of the spinner slowly disappeared, or at least faded into the background. A lot of people, Colin included, had become disenchanted with the ugly spectacle of four very fast bowlers being used in rotation throughout the day, as employed by the West Indies throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with a half-volley as rare a sighting as Lord Lucan, and believed something should be done about it. Quite what, nobody was sure. The West Indies were not complaining. They were world champions and had no desire to have their wings clipped. And, to be honest, nor would any other country had they had the same armoury at their disposal.
But for many reasons, which do not concern us here, the deep well of terrifyingly fast bowlers from the Caribbean started to dry up. Reverse swing came to the fore, perfected by practitioners such as Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and copied by others, and relentless short-pitched bowling, aimed at the body, fell out of fashion. I abjure the use of the word ‘intimidatory’. All fast bowling is intimidating. It is up to the umpires to step in if it gets out of hand and threatens life and limb. ‘And don’t forget helmets!’ Alan Smith reminded me. Indeed not. The introduction of helmets has gone a long way to reducing the negative effect of short-pitched bowling. Thus the problem, much to Colin’s relief, faded into the background.
Spin bowling, to everybody’s chagrin, did indeed appear to be dying out. Then a genius appeared on the scene and single-handedly, it seemed, he saved the breed from extinction and reinvigorated the art. Shane Warne made his Test debut in 1992 and the rest is history. Colin could sleep easy at night. The heritage of spin bowling, stretching back through the ages, including in its family tree Abdul Qadir, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Derek Underwood, Bishan Bedi, Sonny Ramadhin, Jim Laker, Hedley Verity, Clarrie Grimmett even back to Bernard Bosanquet, the inventor of the googly, was safe in Warne’s hands, or fingers.
Those who claim – and there are a few – that Colin enjoyed more than his fair share of good fortune in his life point to several serendipitous events and juicy half-volleys during his career, on and off the pitch. All I can say is this. What batsman has ever scored a hundred without a slice of luck somewhere along the line?
The same goes for what is probably regarded as Colin’s crowning achievement during his stewardship of the ICC. I refer to the readmission of South Africa to world cricket in 1991. It is undeniably true that political and social forces were already in motion, which would result in the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, negotiations with the national government, led by F.W. de Klerk, towards free and fair democratic elections and the eventual assumption by Mandela of the presidency. Over these momentous developments, Colin had no influence; of course he didn’t. But he saw the opportunity and used his considerable authority and powers of persuasion to pave the path for South Africa’s re-admittance.
Private negotiations had been going on for months, involving not only cricket boards but also governments. I do not know which airline Colin used as he travelled the world in his capacity of chairman but the air miles must have been totting up handsomely. One key player in all the comings and goings of the South Africa business was Ali Bacher.
He and Colin were old adversaries on the field of play. Bacher had made his Test debut at Lord’s in 1965, in a three-match series, which South Africa won. Following the end of his playing career, he had become an administrator in the game, overseeing a controversial period when he organised a number of rebel tours of his country during the apartheid years and isolation. But, to his credit, he saw, quicker than most, which way the wind of politics was blowing and worked tirelessly to put in place the amalgamation of the two warring factions of domestic cricket in South Africa, the South African Cricket Union (white) and the South African Cricket Board (multi-racial). Once that significant step had been taken, the decks were cleared for total re-integration.
But not so fast. Colin, by nature a cautious man, knew that it was imperative to get the politicians, as well as the cricket administrators, of all the countries on board. India, in particular, remained sceptical. The more emboldened of the ICC delegates and supporters of South Africa’s re-admittance had targeted the World Cup in March 1992, to be held jointly in Australia and New Zealand, but Colin thought that was probably premature. In July 1991, at a meeting of the ICC, he had made up his mind to disallow South Africa’s participation in the World Cup, believing that insufficient groundwork had been done by the two boards of control still operating in that country; true democracy, in cricket as in politics, was still in its fledgling state.
However, events took a surprising turn. The newly released Nelson Mandela replaced the ailing Oliver Tambo as the president of the ANC and he was anxious to bring an end to the ‘armed struggle’, secure peace to the country and open negotiations to end apartheid rule in South Africa. He needed international backing.
One of his masterstrokes was to lobby the ICC for South Africa’s inclusion in the World Cup. He used the same masterstroke, the country’s abiding passion for sport, to even greater effect at the rugby World Cup in 1995, when he presented the Webb Ellis Cup to the victorious South African captain, Francois Pienaar, dressed in a green Springbok jersey. He was a master of public relations. Accordingly, he set in motion a campaign to promote South Africa’s cause, leaving no stone unturned, no government minister undisturbed, no prime minister or president at peace; even the chairman of the ICC had the full beam of his attention turned in his direction.
In Colin’s papers there are a number of faxes between members of Mandela’s team and the British government. Here is an excerpt from one, Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s deputy and later successor, to Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, ‘I write to you, Sir, to inform you of our support for this application. As you are undoubtedly aware, the ANC has for many years been involved in the struggle to end apartheid in sport...In light of these developments, we request you use your good offices to encourage the admission of the United Board of South Africa into the ICC.’
Two things should be noted. The use of the word ‘united’ in the new name for the governing body of South African cricket was significant, crucial even. And Hurd’s prime minister was John Major, cricket lover and clandestine friend and confidant of Colin.
Still Colin was minded to remain cautious. That is until he received a personal fax, with the ANC logo at the top, from Nelson Mandela himself, from which I quote, ‘The ANC wishes to inform the International Cricket Council that the ANC fully supports the application of the United South African Cricket Board…The United South African Cricket Board is a non-racial, democratic body and it has cricket development programmes which it is implementing throughout South Africa. Further, their participation in that competition [the World Cup] will enhance the process of unity in sport as well as the spirit of reconciliation generally in my country.’
Those words, ‘unity in sport’, must have been music to Colin’s ears.
The cricket lover at heart may have been rejoicing but in public he had to be more measured. This was now September 1991. The World Cup was in the following March. Time was short, very short. Colin moved swiftly. He wrote to Andrew Turnbull, the Parliamentary Private Secretary to prime minister John Major thus, ‘The more I think about it, the more I realise this letter makes it game, set and match with the Test-playing countries. There is no way I could envisage telling the cricket world we had knocked back Nelson Mandela.’
Two days later, he wrote to Michael Melhuish, the MCC president, who had incidentally been in the Cambridge team in 1954 when Colin was captain of Oxford and M.J.K. Smith had scored that double hundred, ‘There is now no logical reason why South Africa should not be admitted to the World Cup.’
A Special General Meeting of the ICC was immediately called – it took place on 23 October – in which Colin made a statement. The minutes were in his papers, ‘The chairman stated that since his own decision was made in July to disallow South Africa from participating in the World Cup in 1992, several significant changes have taken place... Above all, Nelson Mandela had personally written to the chairman of the ICC to allow South Africa to play in the World Cup. That in itself was a major development.’ General discussion ensued. ‘After consultation with the delegates, the chairman announced that since there was no opposition to the proposed resolution and the delegates had achieved consensus, South Africa would be included as the ninth team to take part in the 1992 World Cup.’
It would not take a leap of imagination to picture Colin and John Major raising their glasses of G&T in celebration in the private flat above 10 Downing Street. More publicly, of the many letters and notes of congratulation that Colin received, two will suffice, ‘Surely the most positive and productive ICC meeting ever. Well played indeed, Mr Chairman!’ Signed, Peter West. Another came from an old friend and ex-England colleague, who had also played against Coin, twice, in the Varsity match, Raman Subba Row, ‘Very well played, Chairman!’
The acclamation was not universal however; it never is. The Times took exception to ICC inertia in the face of rapidly changing sociopolitical circumstances, ‘This should have been firmly and irrevocably decided three months ago.’ Subba Row sprang to his friend’s defence. Colin kept a copy of the letter that Subba Row sent to The Times. ‘Politics – like cricket – is a game of timing. Too slow and you get too far behind the clock. Too quick and you may have no wickets left to win the match. But the right pace brings its rewards – in this case the happy and universally accepted return of South African cricket. Securing the endorsement of Mr Mandela, as well as the Commonwealth heads of government was a triumph for South African cricket administration and for Colin Cowdrey as chairman of ICC. Far from decrying a well-timed innings, we should be applauding the near perfect performance of the players in this match.’
Generally, it was accepted that Colin had played a blinder. He was able to report thus at the AGM of the ICC in July of the following year, after the World Cup, ‘With the full blessing of the ANC, the ICC conference of 1991 saw the restoration of our formal links with that country and the new United Cricket Board of South Africa has been welcomed as a full member of the ICC. They made an historic visit to India and played in the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. This was followed by a short tour of the West Indies with their first full Test match against the West Indies in Barbados. A full international programme lies ahead.’ Indeed it did. South Africa were back.
Colin wrote to Ali Bacher after the tour to India. Of course he did. He single-handedly kept the Post Office solvent. ‘Congratulations on your triumphant tour through India. I would think that you were quite overcome by the welcome you received... It is really marvellous that the ice has been broken and you will be going from strength to strength.’ Prescient words. Twenty years later, South Africa were ranked number one in the world.
News of Colin’s knighthood later that year – ‘for services to cricket’ – came as no surprise but with considerable delight and satisfaction to his many friends. Letters, faxes, telegrams of congratulations poured in from all over the world. One obviously amused him because he kept it and I came across it buried in his papers. It was from Buckingham Palace, addressed formally to Sir Colin Cowdrey, with the usual (I imagine) stuff about procedure and protocol. It concludes with this paragraph, ‘In the past there have been occasions when a person to be knighted has been unable to kneel. To avoid any possible embarrassment, I should be grateful if you would answer the question below. Are you able to kneel? YES/NO’ With evident glee and no doubt a smile playing about his lips, Colin crossed out NO and signed it.
One can imagine Colin swapping the medal on his lapel for a trainers’ pass at any race meeting where his wife had a runner and this he frequently did, proving to be a loyal and enthusiastic supporter of her career, even though his knowledge of horses was minimal. Notwithstanding the calls of his new-found hobby, his diary was full with other commitments. Christopher, at his father’s memorial service, referred to his ‘enduring fault’ of never being able to say no. Except when he was batting with Boycott, he privately added.
There would be a ribbon to be cut here, a plaque to be unveiled there and a new pavilion to be opened somewhere else. He was perpetually in demand at dinners, commemorative functions, charity auctions, benefactors’ galas, benefit matches – you name it, if the occasion had cricket somewhere in its headline, Colin would be there. He was invited on to boards, councils, governing bodies, committees. I did a rough tally of the organisations he represented, those at any rate that I found evidence of in his papers. They included: chairman of, variously, MCC cricket committee, county pitches committee and Southern Sports Council; member of the Winston Churchill Fellowship Awards Committee; treasurer of the Percy Bilton Charity (for disadvantaged and disabled children); non-executive director of Bilton plc: member of the council for the British Heart Foundation; president of the Lord’s Taverners and the Association of Cricket Umpires; trustee of MCC; Fellow of the University of Durham. The list is exhaustive.
Exhausting too. Why did a man with a dicky heart spread himself so lavishly instead of gently embracing the sixth of Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man, ‘the lean and slippered pantaloons/with spectacles on nose and pouch on side’, with the occasional round of golf thrown in? In short, why could he not say no?
His life had been blessed; he would have been the first to admit that. He had been able to play cricket, at the highest level and for longer than anyone could dare to hope, and rarely did a day pass when he did not give thanks for this. As a result, he felt he owed a debt of gratitude to the game. He wanted to give back, to repay, to share and to enthuse. Cricket was more than a game to him, it was a way of life and his life now was to spread the gospel. This he did in spadefuls. The consequences, as we shall see, were heartbreaking. If cricket was his life, it cost him his life.
Before the umpire raised his finger, there was another honour for which Colin could respectfully raise his bat. His close friendship with John Major, known only to a small circle of trusted aides and one of which the wider world was largely ignorant, was to have an extraordinary outcome. In June 1997 it was announced that Colin was about to be made a peer of the realm. Immediately, unsympathetic commentators, cynical journalists and scribes with a bee in their bonnet leapt upon this as evidence of naked cronyism, the prime minister rewarding his old chum and cricket hero with a nice little sinecure in the House of Lords. The quip of Colin swapping one cushy seat at Lord’s for another at Lords gained plenty of traction.
The truth was quite different and took a while to come out. For some time, Colin had been working quietly behind the scenes on a scheme to unearth and nurture sporting talent from a young generation becoming increasingly inert and lacking in ambition and, crucially, opportunity. He had suggested the idea to Major and the prime minister, being a sporting fanatic himself, picked it up and ran with it. He needed a voice and a platform. The voice was provided by one of the most public – and respected – sporting personalities in the country, Colin Cowdrey, and the platform, a political one that did not need a constituency and an election, was provided by the House of Lords.
Thus Colin was ennobled as Baron Cowdrey of Tonbridge. Note the geographical location contained in the title. His friends had suggested Canterbury but he had rejected the very idea – he would be stepping on a certain archbishop’s toes, he reasoned. His old England team-mate Basil D’Oliveira, who always mischievously referred to Colin as Mr Choudary, now proposed he should be known as Lord Choudary of Bangalore. Instead, Colin settled upon The Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge, thus indicating where his heart, and his abiding gratitude, lay. ‘But what shall we call you now, Master?’ cried another old team-mate, Brian Luckhurst. ‘How about Lord and Master?’ came back the droll reply.
The carping upset Colin’s many supporters. Ian Wooldridge, the well-known Daily Mail sports columnist, rushed to his defence in print. ‘Throughout his life, Colin Cowdrey has been a modest, almost self-deprecating, man and as such he will assuredly be aware today that there are those who will ridicule his preferment. There always are...Colin Cowdrey now has a public platform from which to press home his scheme. It is called the House of Lords and he intends to use it…I am delighted for him as I am for all other sportsmen so honoured today. These men have contributed hugely to British sport and the day some disgruntled old runt seeks to destroy the system, this country will be the poorer for it.’
And so say all of us was the message from hundreds of well-wishers. I select but a few from many in his personal files. ‘It is a great honour for you and the game. You will wear it lightly and with distinction as you have carried many other honours,’ Rev. David Sheppard, Archbishop of Liverpool. ‘My dear Kipper, Will hope to speak to you on the blower soon but if I don’t, may I be the last to congratulate you on your appearance up the order,’ Doug Insole. ‘Dear Kipper, I hope your ears have been burning just a little because I have told all and sundry that there never has been an award more deserved than this one to you, You are truly a marvel to have achieved so much for which all in cricket can be very grateful. Good on you, my Lord!’ Ted Dexter.
And this writer needs no identifying. ‘My dear Choudary, What a star! Absolutely wasted on this earth. I am sure there are higher things awaiting you. I am sure there were huge celebrations (tea parties) in Bangalore for one of their long lost sons...You are truly a lovely man.’ What would have warmed Colin’s heart was that all these letters, and many more, came from cricketers, ex-colleagues and opponents, his tribe, if you like. Lest anyone assume that it was only the fraternity who were happy for him, let HRH Prince Edward speak for the great and the good throughout the land. ‘Very many congratulations on your elevation to a life peer. This is great news and I am delighted for you.’
Colin did not waste time. This was no undemanding half-volley he had been delivered. The demise of sport in schools was a national scandal, exercising the minds of people from many professions, not just politicians. Colin rose to make his maiden speech in the Upper House a mere six months after his investiture. Some peers wait for years before strapping on the pads. Some peers never get changed. Was he nervous?
‘I rise with some trepidation and with many more butterflies in the tummy, I can assure noble Lords, than ever I endured at the other Lord’s, almost as hallowed, but no less noble.’
Quickly, he warmed to his theme, sport in schools, ‘It is a subject dear to my heart and to many across the land…I long for time, almost more than money, to be given to the school curriculum for sport…This time last year, I was set a task by the then prime minister, the Right Honourable John Major, as part of his initiative, Raising the Game. I was charged to form a small group comprising Sports Council, head teachers and PE teachers to see whether it would be practicable if we could persuade leading sportsmen and sportswomen to visit schools and demonstrate their skills...The task is daunting. There are too few of them [skilled PE teachers] to cope with the vast numbers, the limited playing fields, inadequate facilities and too little time given to each pupil.’
He then went on to evaluate the importance of his message, ‘The great thing about sport is that one is never as successful for very long. When one starts to get above oneself, it is a terrific leveller because one loses very much more than one wins. This is a wonderful teacher for life.’
He concluded with this heartfelt rallying cry for those who would take up the initiative, ‘I hope this debate today will send a signal to all head teachers, urging them to give a little more time to sport and, what is more important, when they do so they will be able to do so with government approval.’
Did the House rise to him, as they used to do at that other place (I refer to Lord’s, not the Commons) as he resumed his seat? No, they did not. It is not custom and practice to do so. But the praise he received afterwards was unstinting.
Once again, a copious number of congratulatory letters dropped through his letterbox. Here are three that I have chosen from his files. ‘Heartfelt congratulations on your speech today. After 51 years in the House, I count it as one of the great ones,’ Earl of Longford. ‘You made the most magnificent speech. Many congratulations…one of the best speeches in the House for many a long year,’ Lord Moynihan. ‘I thought I should drop you a line to thank you for initiating Wednesday’s invaluable debate on sport,’ Trevor Brooking in his role as chairman of Sport England.
Mischievously, I have occasionally wondered how their lordships behave during a debate in the Lords in which they are not participating and in which they might have little interest. Do they sit and listen quietly or do they heckle and behave rudely, as they seem to do in the other House? Or, to put it another way, when they are on the back benches, do the more playful of their number keep slumber at bay with furtive chatter like naughty schoolboys in the back row in class?
I asked a fellow peer and old friend of Colin’s, Ian MacLaurin, whether they ever attended debates in the chamber together. The former chairman of Tesco, Vodafone and the ECB, The Lord MacLaurin of Knebworth fixed me with those unwavering eyes, much as he did back in the days when I used to teach his son. Then he grinned, ‘Colin and I got to know each other well, particularly when I started to run English cricket.’
MacLaurin, we must remember, like Colin, was something of a schoolboy prodigy as a cricketer and had pretensions of playing for his native county, Kent, before a career in the retail trade claimed him. With this in mind, he was keen to share one of his memories. ‘Whenever we attended functions together and he was down to speak – which was often – Colin would turn to me and say to his audience that he was pleased and honoured to have his old friend, Ian MacLaurin present. “Though I could never understand,” he would add, “why he turned down playing for Kent to become a grocer!” The way he said “grocer” never failed to bring the house down.’
Talking of houses, what happened when you attended debates together in the Lords? ‘I would be pretending to listen to a speech on something or other and there would be a little nudge in my ribs, accompanied by a written note. “Why on earth are you contemplating splitting the championship into two divisions?” it would say. Or, “What’s this Twenty20 thing you’re proposing? What will that do to our great game?” I’d write back, “Because I think it’s a good idea. After all, we’ve just lost the Benson and Hedges competition. We think it might catch on.” And so on. It was wonderful banter, great fun. It was a huge honour and pleasure to have known him. It was a very, very special time for me.’
Colin did not rest on his laurels. He knew as well as anyone that you are only as good as your last innings. He had contacts, he had influence, he had the ear of important people who could exert pressure. None more so than the prime minister. Of course the prime minister was no longer his chum, John Major, but that made little difference. In point of fact, he had close personal contact with the past three premiers.
Among the hand-written letters from Number 10 which I unearthed in his papers, there are three that stand out. One from Margaret Thatcher, ‘Thank you so much for your kind letter about the recent leadership change. I do appreciate it…. It has been a difficult time but I’m sure the decision I took was the best under the circumstances.’ Denis Thatcher, let us not forget, was a keen cricket fan and he and Colin were good friends. The friendship with John Major was even closer. Evidently in response to a letter of congratulation on his election victory in 1992, Major had written, ‘Thank you for your kind letter... Such support is heartwarming, especially in view of all the hard work that lies ahead.’ And just to show that the colours of Kent embraced both blue and red, Colin had clearly been badgering the new Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, following his initiative in the House of Lords debate. Blair had written back, saying, ‘Thank you for your letter seeking a meeting to discuss regenerating grass roots sport.’
* * * * *
I do not believe the meeting ever took place. Two months later, Colin had a major stroke and effectively, his public life came to an end. Not the least of the sadness of this untimely event was that, having tirelessly manoeuvred himself into a position where he could make a difference to the paucity of opportunities for sport for the young, his health, not his resolve let him down. It was nothing short of tragic.
The stroke was untimely in another distressing way, this time closer to home. With his two sons, Christopher and Graham, having finished their careers with Kent (the other son, Jeremy, had chosen to pursue a career in the City), the coast was clear for Colin to become president of his old club. Hitherto, he had always resisted requests to become Kent’s president while his sons were still playing but now there was no excuse; he accepted, with alacrity, pleasure and modesty.
As with his presidency of MCC, there was a harmonious correlation in the date. It was the millennium year, 2000. He was equally pleased that 2000 had been earmarked by Kent for an appeal for youth cricket in the county. As usual, he sat down to work out a plan for how best to celebrate the special season. The centrepiece would be a President’s Tent for each day of the match during Canterbury Week. On all four days, he invited about 70 people to lunch and to watch the game. One proud guest was his captain at Oxford, Alan Dowding. He remembers the occasion with great fondness. ‘Colin looked fine. He stood up to welcome us all and spoke brilliantly, with no notes. He remembered everyone in the room and made reference to us all in his usual, wonderful, smiling, cheerful way. It is so sad to think that was the last time any of us saw him.’
That evening, Colin was struck down by a stroke. It was serious. At the hospital, the family gathered and while there, they decided the best way to proceed was for each one of the boys to take it in turns to host the remaining three days at Canterbury, while the other two remained by their father’s bedside. That the lunches went ahead at all was a tribute to their emotional resilience; that the celebrations were a great success says a great deal about the Cowdrey tradition of courage, fortitude and tenacity in the face of ill fortune, leavened as always with a sprinkling of humour. The show must go on. Or, to put it another way, no matter what the score, how many wickets have gone down, you have to pick up your bat, put on your gloves and go out there to do battle. By all accounts, they carried it off with the same aplomb as their father would have done, while inside, their hearts were close to breaking.
There is a charming letter in Colin’s files, a hastily scrawled missive on A4 paper, written by Carol to her father when she got back home after having attended the second of the three re-organised lunches. I quote from it, not sparing her blushes or her wrath at my temerity, but I hope she will forgive me. ‘Darling Dad, Jay was amazing. Everybody thought he was brilliant. You would have been proud. If ever you have doubted in your life how much people like and admire you – never doubt it again...Chris had the same reaction yesterday and I’m sure Graham will tomorrow…You’ve given us all a great scare this week. We have been so delighted to see you fighting back. I love you to bits. C x’
She showed me a photo of all three occasions, with Chris, Jeremy (Jay) and Graham giving their speeches. ‘Look at the boys,’ she urged me. ‘The strain is etched on their faces. How they managed is beyond me.’
But they did. It was the Cowdrey way. Just as it was the Cowdrey way to fight back. The family were in awe at how Colin battled to overcome the catastrophic effects of his stroke. He had regular physiotherapy, something he did not shirk, in an attempt to learn how to walk again but it was a huge struggle, one that he was never going to win. Chris remembers his father in some of these sessions ‘where he would try to catch a tennis ball while walking slowly, which seemed to stimulate his mind and movement’. As you would expect, he reminded me, of someone who stood third in the list of all-time English catchers in Test cricket, below Cook and Strauss and equal with Botham, on 120.
‘A week before Dad died,’ Jeremy said, ‘he got himself dressed up in his Kent tie and went to a pub supper with Carol and me. He walked very, very shakily into the pub. He was never going to be back to normal.’ Nevertheless, Colin’s thoughts, as usual, were with others, not his own predicament. There is a delightful telegram in his files, sent from the Cowdrey family. ‘For the attention of Alec Stewart, c/o the England Team. Message: Our father was having his first food since the stroke. The nurse told him it was the day of your 100th Test. After a pause and with a mouthful of porridge, he said, Send a fax... wish them luck!’
Yet again, the letters poured in. To plagiarise Carol’s words, if anybody doubted the affection and regard in which Colin was held throughout the cricketing world, both playing and spectating, never doubt it again, having read through the reams of goodwill. ‘My dear Kipper, Glancing through the paper today, I came across a little snippet which, much to my alarm, stated that you had not been well... There is nothing in the world you HAVE to do. Not doing it will not change the world,’ Frank Tyson, in Queensland. ‘Dear Colin, I hear from your myriad offspring that you are out of hospital. Great news,’ Mark Nicholas. ‘My dear Kipper, Delighted to hear you continue to make progress,’ Doug Insole. ‘Just heard the news – you shouldn’t be overdoing it,’ Tom Graveney. ‘I was sorry to hear you were admitted to hospital. From what I hear, you are on the mend. I trust it is so,’ Alec Bedser. And many, many more.
The messages of hope, encouragement and good luck were to no avail. Colin died, at home, on 4 December 2000, aged just 67.