Famous Cricketers No 72 - Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge, C.B.E.

The potential was apparent the moment he went to Tonbridge School, although at this stage his leg-break and googly bowling was attracting as much attention as his batting. He rose immediately to the First XI at just 13 finding himself almost certainly the youngest player ever to appear in a competitive match at Lord’s. He scored 75 and 44 and took 3-58 and 5-59 helping his alma mater to a close two run win over Clifton. For the next four seasons he re-wrote the Tonbridge record books scoring almost 3,000 runs. There was no family connection with Kent. His home county was Surrey and other relatives lived in Leicestershire. Indeed his success in that early Lord’s match had attracted the attention of the Oval authorities and he played one unhappy match with the Young Amateurs of Surrey in 1946. However the key factor was Tonbridge and had not a technicality over his entrance date arisen he could have gone to Marlborough, his father’s first choice, and the history of Kent cricket in the post-war years would have been seriously different. But at Tonbridge under the influence of ex-Kent county cricketer C.H.(John) Knott , the Kent connection was forged and in 1948 he appeared with some success for the Young Amateurs of Kent making scores of 159, 85 and 79 not out. The following season he appeared three times for Kent 2nd XI, progressing finally to the full county side in 1950. Career Cowdrey’s post preparatory school admission as to his capabilities lies at the heart of any assessment of the Cowdrey career. He never really knew how good he was. At his best he was one of the outstanding English batsmen of the twentieth century, yet somehow in any comparison of the great players of that age, Cowdrey is often forgotten. He gathered not one single vote in Wisden ’s Cricketers of the Century (although in fairness neither did his great contemporary Peter May). His career statistics are good but not breathtaking. The records that stand to his name are often born of the longevity of his career. He scored 107 first-class hundreds yet only three passed two hundred (none for England) a ratio that compares poorly for example with Walter Hammond, who counted one in five of his centuries passing that figure. Yet to a generation of cricket followers, notably in Kent, Cowdrey was the master. Most will recall to their dying day, just as fathers and grandfathers did with Frank Woolley, at least one Cowdrey innings played at his superb best. No one played the cover drive more elegantly. No one could meet better short-pitched bowling with such breathtaking hooks. No one caressed the ball with more perfect timing to the boundary. Yet, perhaps too often a lack of confidence and indecision would creep in and hamper him in his choice of shots and drive him into periods of introspection obsessed with defence. It was a career of contradiction. Plump and unathletic on first sight, he was an excellent judge of a quick single and in the slips his lightning reactions brought him countless catches, the ball often characteristically sliding into his pocket before any realisation of its fate. The early promise of a high class bowler never bore fruit, notably after he came down from Oxford, losing, as he did, control of the ball’s flight. Kent In the pantheon of Kent’s heroes Cowdrey’s place is assured. Alone of his generation of amateur cricketers, he came upon the county scene when the amateur/professional divide was still entrenched, and left it over a quarter of a century later in the vastly different age of players and limited-over cricket. Cowdrey was the last of that more gentlemanly era now all but gone. For Kent he played for 27 successive seasons, remarkable in itself for an amateur, and excluding those whose careers were interrupted by war, a length of time unique for the county. He captained the county from 1957 to 6