Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

158 The Coach A more sympathetic picture is painted by another member of the XI, David Kemp, later chairman of Kent CCC: He was greatly admired and respected at Tonbridge and I personally owe him a very great deal. He was such a lovely man in every way: good-looking, easy-going and gentle. I cannot remember a single occasion on which he was short-tempered or unkind. He coached by encouragement and praising the good shots rather than criticising the bad ones. In his coaching he was orthodox, sound and patient. But what I particularly remember were his qualities as a person. We all knew that he desperately wanted us to succeed and we were just as keen to earn his good opinion of us and please him. He used to umpire our 1st XI matches and the odd comment or word of advice when we were at the bowler’s end could be a source of great comfort. But there was another boy with whom Astill formed a closer relationship. The story can be given largely in the words 280 of that boy, Michael Cowdrey, or Colin Cowdrey as he became known on leaving school. Before returning to their tea plantation, where they had been throughout the war, his parents wished to see him settled into his new school (Marlborough had been his father’s first choice): I went to Tonbridge School in the May … May 2nd 1946. … By an extraordinary coincidence he [Astill] came down to Tonbridge a week before the start of term to meet C.H.Knott, our cricket master [who] took him down to the Rose and Crown for a drink before lunch where my father and mother and myself just happened to meet [them]: we were going for an appointment with the headmaster after lunch. … This was the next time [after Madras in 1927] that my father and Ewart Astill met. … My father could not help going up to him and reminding him of previous acquaintance. The penny gradually dropped [with Astill] that this was that cranky billiards player called Cowdrey who also opened the innings. When Ernest Cowdrey mentioned that his son was starting at Tonbridge that term, Astill said ‘Oh, wait a minute, it is now coming together because I have just had a letter from Alf Gover and Andy Sandham because young Michael has been at their cricket school in Wandsworth, hasn’t he, and they’ve written to me to say will I please see him on the first day of term and make certain he gets some good coaching in the nets because they think that he’s rather got something; so I’m delighted to see you,’ and, turning to the thirteen-year old lad, added, ‘So we’ll both be first-termers together’. On the first day Astill was to take the First Eleven and Colts, but asked Cowdrey to come round the back of the nets because ‘I shall be looking out for you’. So term started on Friday evening and on the Saturday afternoon Cowdrey was lying on the bank behind the nets: Eventually Ewart Astill picked me out and said, ‘Oh good, I was hoping you were going to come’; and here I was in mufti with ordinary black shoes on and he said, ‘Oh, you must come and bowl these leg-spinners, 280 In private conversation.