Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

159 The Coach because I’m told you can bowl the googly’. There were about six nets going and Astill, breaking all the rules (fortunately ‘John’ Knott had gone off to tea, otherwise there would have been a hell of a stink, I should think) said, ‘Come, take your tie off, put your coat down there and let’s see you bowl a few leg-breaks and googlies in the end net’. And some very tyrannical master who ran the Colts, Major Gray, … was horrified: what was this boy bowling in shoes for, and called ‘What are you doing here, young man? And so Ewart had to come and rescue me and say ‘It was my fault. We were short of a bowler and I knew the boy’. ‘Oh well, he shouldn’t be in here with black shoes. That’s all, it’s not a way to play cricket’. Astill agreed with Gray (‘a dear man’), but Cowdrey was allowed to bowl, ‘and so that was our start’. Although after a while Astill had to coach the other boys, Cowdrey could see out of the corner of his eye that ‘he never took his eye off me whenever I bowled a good ball and after a while he said “and they tell me you bowl a googly. … I’d like to see you bowl a googly next ball” … and by chance it pitched on the off-stump and knocked this boy’s leg stump out and Ewart was very good because he didn’t make a great fuss, he just gave me a huge wink.’ After 25 minutes or so Astill told Cowdrey that he had seen enough for the time being and that he should go and watch before Mr Knott returned. The next day Cowdrey went to the ‘Games Porch’ where teams were posted. He had been told that he might be in the Junior Colts (under-15) team and A star of the future, Michael Colin Cowdrey in his Tonbridge schooldays.