Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

160 The Coach ‘I went and looked at the appointed hour and some tears started to well up because I couldn’t find myself, but I controlled myself and someone said, “That’s funny, you’re in this list over here”.’ Cowdrey was indeed in the under-16s, though ‘only a pipsqueak’ of 13, and ‘people said “That’s a bit odd – the boy’s only been here two days”’. In the nets on the Monday he ‘got slogged around’ and in the internal practice game on the Tuesday made nought and took no wicket for about 30 watched by Knott and Astill, who ‘just quietly faded away’ when he was out. Nonetheless, Cowdrey was picked for the under-16 match on Saturday, scored about 20 and took four wickets. About three weeks later he was chosen for the 3rd XI v the 2nd XI in a two-day match and batted at eleven. Astill umpired ‘and took a great interest in my bowling because I got 17 wickets, nine and eight’, including the head of the school, bowled twice. Astill as umpire ‘helped a bit, “come on, you must pitch the thing up; I don’t mind you being slogged for four off a full-toss, but you mustn’t bowl short – try and pitch the ball on the boy’s toe”’. Cowdrey’s 17 wickets in the match put the whole place in bedlam, and Ewart Astill couldn’t understand this bedlam at all. He was just a straightforward cricketer and he said to ‘John’ Knott who was so traditional it wasn’t true, ‘The boy’s got to play.’ ‘What do you mean “he’s got to play?”’ ‘Well’, Ewart said, ‘you haven’t got anybody in the First XI who can bowl like this.’ ‘No, I don’t suppose we have.’ ‘Well, you’ll have to play him then; how can you keep him out?’ Knott, thinking of the school side of things, said: ‘He hasn’t been here three weeks, you can’t put him in the First XI’, and Astill said: ‘Why not?’ Anyway there was a sort of summit meeting which made Maastricht look tiny, you know, and the headmaster asked ‘Is he big-headed, is he going to be affected by the bad language?’ I was given a talking-to by my housemaster, ‘Mr Astill is determined you play, but you’ve got to realize that in the afternoon you’re with the head boy and all that sort of thing, but when cricket isn’t on you can’t go by and say “Hello, John”; you’ve got to keep your distance and know your place’. 281 The first match was against the Free Foresters. ‘Certainly Ewart will have had a word with them’ and asked them not to slog the little lad around too much for his six to eight overs. Cowdrey bowled ‘quite well’, no wicket for about 36 runs in about eight overs, but was out first ball at No.10 − ‘a pretty rough start’. On the Tuesday, however, he was picked for the match v Malvern with great encouragement from Astill, who pointed out that these were now schoolboys and not club cricketers like the Free Foresters. Cowdrey took four for 36 and scored ten runs. ‘To cut a long story short, by the end of term I was batting at No.3 for the school and I had got a lot of wickets. So that was my launch – Ewart Astill entirely, really.’ But for him Cowdrey would not have won national attention by being the youngest player, at 13, to appear in a match at Lord’s, where he was the star as both batsman and bowler in Tonbridge’s famous and narrow victory over 281 In accordance with the practice of public schools Cowdrey was at the time ‘fagging’ (performing menial tasks) for a senior boy.