He was the Lord of Lord's

IT IS a flavour to savour as you see a fresher take his first steps down the wicket. The way he connects puts the stamp of class on him. This is exactly what happened when, as a lad just awarded his `Blue', Colin Cowdrey first appeared at the Park's in Oxford University. It was as lovely a ground as any in England, the trees `greenscaping' it offering endless variety. Into those trees Polly Umrigar was to land three sixes in swift succession, displaying the strength of a navvy in roaring his way to 229 not out, studded with 33 fours. But this not before Colin Cowdrey, looking as chubby and cheery as a Cheshire cat, had proved his pedigree (against the 1952 touring Indians) with 92 of the best. Where Polly Umrigar was all power, Colin Cowdrey was all timing.

The talk in England, right then, was all about the blue blood in the batting of Peter May, at one end, and David Sheppard, manning the other crease, at the Fenner's ground of Cambridge University. Oxford thus urgently needed a status symbol to rival the wondrously blending shotplay of these two, each presenting a striking study in the geometry of batsmanship. Colin Cowdrey, it was clear to me even then, was destined to follow in the aristocratic footsteps of Peter May and David Sheppard. All the more so after the bloodlines he brought to hitting 101 for Kent at Canterbury vs the visiting Indians.

To recount Lord Cowdrey's feats and records at this point, since his passing, would be to gild the Lillee he faced with such exemplary courage (alongside Thomson), when rising 42 on his sixth tour of Australia (in 20 years) during 1974-75. To me, as a stripling, Colin Cowdrey represented the meaningful carrying forward of the amateur tradition, in his country's cricket, at a time when Len Hutton had already emerged as the first professional captain of England. Denis Compton, by then (1952), having lived life to the full, was getting no younger, so that the English amateur lineage, at the topmost Test level, was in genuine need of sustenance. Colin Cowdrey came as a whiff of fresh air in such a setting, his 92 and 54 for Oxford, plus his 101 for Kent, being hit in a style that already hinted at being matched by technique.

I reminded Lord Cowdrey about the above three knocks when he was in India not too long ago. Reminded him about how Ghulam Ahmed had teased and tormented him, before bowling him all ends up, to deprive the 19-year- old Cowdrey of a rare hundred for Oxford. Colin Cowdrey, with his receding hairline, made a game attempt to stir the cobwebs of memory, having by then seen it all, lived it all. I pinpointed how his 92 had been followed by 54 for Oxford, not to speak of his 101 for Kent, and sought to know if, in that era of embarrassing batting riches for England, he had really hoped to make the big time. Lord Cowdrey, characteristically, came up with the retort that he had not thought of any such thing at all when he was at Oxford; that he just went out there and gave it a belt, once he had gauged the ball's line in tune with his waistline! Yes, Colin Cowdrey never ever calculated his stay at the wicket. He just stepped out to enjoy himself; and his inherent quality ensured his longevity at the wicket. His 107 centuries in the 42,719 runs (at 42.89) that he notched (in a noteworthy career spanning 26 years) saw Colin Cowdrey close his capacious hands on 638 catches. Colin was the Big Ben at first slip, there was a clockwork precision about his catching there.

This was something that even Ray Illingworth (who snatched the England captaincy from him) had to concede. There was no love lost between the two, Cowdrey's was the sneaking contempt of the ample amateur for the hard-nosed professional who saw the game as an end in itself. For Colin Cowdrey, life was at once a ball and a ballad. With a flair that belied his physique, Cowdrey reached out for 120 catches while turning out in 114 Tests for England; his 7624 Test runs (at 44.06) could have been many more, had he but chosen to extend his girth at the crease. Nobody used his pads more effectively to frustrate Indian spin than did Colin Cowdrey, keen of eye and firm of foot.

Colin Cowdrey arrived in India midway through England's 1963-64 tour of this country, undertaken with the well-padded Mike Smith at the helm. Quite a few members of the MCC team, by that stage, had shown no `stomach' for touring India. `Tummy upset' had all but seen Mike Smith's England (who chose, bull-doggedly, to draw all five Tests) come close to losing the second match of the series at Bombay's Brabourne Stadium. This was when Colin Cowdrey, roly-poly as they come, materialised in India. Born in Ootacamund, he took to Calcutta's Eden Gardens like a beaver, working his way to 107. As the following fourth Test, on Delhi's Ferozeshah Kotla featherbed, saw Cowdrey loll his way to a well- rounded 151, Colin verily looked England's immovable property in India. And Cowdrey appeared to be just carrying on from where he had left off at the Kotla, having reached 38 at Kanpur's Green Park, when India's captain, the junior Nawab of Pataudi, had a brainwave. Tiger Pataudi had a go with the second new ball himself; and the sheer surprise of seeing a Nawab turn over his princely arm had Cowdrey falling lbw! Of Tiger, Pearson Surita would say that we should call him `The Nawab of Padaudi'. About Colin Cowdrey, there was nothing even Pearson (with his gift of the gab) could think up. Colin's pad-play defied description.

But that was mostly against Indian spin. Against the rest of the world, Colin Cowdrey was free-stroking enough to excite the imagination. The criticism has been levelled that a few more than four of his 22 Test hundreds could have been against traditional rival, Australia (in the same vein in which he took a century in each innings, off the Kangaroos, while striking out for Kent at Canterbury in 1961). Cowdrey certainly had the savvy to hone more hundreds against Australia, but this would have meant curbing his natural inclination to play shots.

Not that Cowdrey was unhappy defending. He played himself meticulously in, like all seasoned batsmen planning to take root at the wicket. But once Cowdrey had his eagle eye in, shots flowed from his scimitar with poise and panache.

In this sense, India never saw the best of Michael Colin Cowdrey. Soft-spoken and gentle by disposition, Cowdrey was near apologetic in the punch with which he sent the ball to all corners of the field. An innings by Colin Cowdrey was an experience in shared perceptions. I saw Peter May bat at his best against India, I beheld David Sheppard impressively hit his way out of trouble, to notch 119 of the finest, in the fourth and final Test at The Oval in August 1952. I could not separate the two in the art of shot selection or shot production. Yet the striking willow of Colin Cowdrey abides, in the heart and the mind, as something distinct in itself. You could not compare Cowdrey with either May or Sheppard, you could only contrast. And it was in this contrast that you discovered Cowdrey's greatness as a super striker of the ball in his own idiom.

It was a remarkable phase in English cricket when I first espied Colin Cowdrey. At one end of the spectrum, I watched in action the true England stalwarts in Len Hutton, Denis Compton and Bill Edrich. Where Hutton was all technique, Compton was all style, while Edrich was all substance. Side by side I saw stroke-players as delicate and refined as Reg Simpson and Tom Graveney, two men who had the rare gift of making batting look the easiest thing in the world. About Peter May and David Sheppard, I want to say nothing more.

It was in such a forbidding milieu that I first set eyes on Colin Cowdrey. There seemed to be just no opening for a player of even his potential in the England team of the time, led with ruthless professional acumen by Len Hutton, marshalling the resources of Alec Bedser and Freddie Trueman, Jim Laker and Tony Lock, as only he could, even as Godfrey Evans brought up the rear. Yet Colin Cowdrey soon broke through, because he always had the individuality and the integrity.

His exploits, since, for Kent and England have been well chronicled. He hit the ball as hard as any performer in the game. But he never played the game so hard that he did not win fresh friends and influence young people. Colin Cowdrey's art lay in the fact that he was always giving while taking runs off any county or country. At his zenith, his strokeplay was uninhibited enough to render his batting a joy even to the opposition.

The real Colin Cowdrey was the one who, against all odds, hit 154 in the 1957 Edgbaston Test, while partnering Peter May (285 not out), in that hitback fourth-wicket stand of 411 (at a time when England was 288 behind on the first innings!) to lay low the Sonny Ramadhin bogey. Cowdrey's was a spirit not easily broken, even the acrimony surrounding his long-drawn divorce got him down for only a while. He thrilled to hearing the radio commentator detailing how his son, Christopher Cowdrey, had taken his first Test wicket in India. Papa Colin was so overcome that he drove up the wrong end into a one-way street!

It was the one time Colin's driving was misdirected. For his driving was his strength as a batsman, courage his hallmark as a player. The years saw him vintage into a performer with his own unique niche in the English pantheon. The play was the thing and, in keeping with his `MCC' initials, he wore many caps for England - as player and administrator. What came through, in any role he played, was his transparency and his sincerity. Colin Cowdrey symbolised, in his avuncularly rotund frame, the essence of the game - as a cricket personality pre-eminently belonging to the Gentlemen of England.

RAJU BHARATAN

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