Masterly Batting: 100 Great Test Centuries by Ferriday Patrick

Author:Ferriday,Patrick
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Von Krumm Publishing
Published: 2016-09-20T18:30:00+00:00

Colin Cowdrey – 102

Australia v England, Melbourne 31 December-5 January 1954-55

-Dave Wilson-

England, holders of the Ashes and having stumbled at the first hurdle in their defence of the title, are set on their way to retaining the cherished urn by an iridescent batting performance, buttressed by a fiery fast bowler in irresistible form demolishing a favoured Australia for 111. “Ah yes, Headingley ’81!” I hear you cry. But no – this particular tale of big-bottomed derring-do took place some 26 years before and on the other side of the world.

When I first began following the game in the 1960s, I was initially drawn more to batsmen as it seemed to me that they needed to be perfect – typically they were allowed just one mistake, resulting in their dismissal. Colin Cowdrey was one of the leading batsmen of the time so I was well aware of him, though he was by then well into his thirties, his somewhat corpulent figure usually enhanced even more by being encased in a sweater seemingly two inches thick. So it came as something of a shock to me once I started studying the game’s rich history to discover that even as a callow youth Cowdrey had still cut something of a large figure.

Cowdrey’s additional pounds became largely irrelevant, however, once he took guard and began to stroke the world’s best bowlers to all corners of the ground with as fine a technique as you could wish for, and with little apparent effort. Study any photograph of Cowdrey in action and in every case the follow through will display a classically high left elbow. Such model technique had Cowdrey turning heads at an early age. His dexterity in the slips was also seemingly unimpeded by his bulk. He was awarded his county cap in 1951 aged just 18, the youngest ever for Kent. By 1953 he was turning out for his county’s first team though it was while representing the Gentlemen that he scored two good fifties against the touring Australians, a side featuring the great strike bowlers Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller. That performance was to stand him in good stead when the team was selected for the next Ashes contest in Australia.

The following year Cowdrey’s numbers dipped somewhat, though this was in part caused by the wettest summer in a long time and this, together with final examinations at Oxford University, tempered any expectations he may have had of making the squad for the upcoming Ashes tour. As it happened, he was playing for Kent against Surrey at Blackheath when the squad was announced and, astonished to hear his name called while Surrey stalwarts Jim Laker and Tony Lock missed out, he hurried away from the ground before he could be accosted by the Surrey players over his inclusion. Cowdrey had not yet scored a Championship hundred, played in a Test or toured overseas, so he was ‘blooded’ in that summer’s final Test against Pakistan, named as twelfth man but only being required to field for 20 nervous minutes.

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