Colin Cowdrey, Lord Cowdrey Of Tonbridge (1932-2000)

Colin Cowdrey came to Tonbridge as a boarder in Ferox Hall in the summer term of 1946. He was born in India in 1932, the son of a cricket-mad tea-planter father who gave him the initials MCC. He had five years in the 1st XI at Tonbridge, beginning in his first term, and in his first appearance at Lord’s that year against Clifton he showed his all-round ability by scoring 75 and 44 and taking 8 wickets with his leg-breaks. He captained the 1st XI in his last two seasons of 1949 and 1950, won the Public Schools Rackets competition and captained the 1st XV in 1950, the year in which he was also Head of School.

In 1950 he played the first of 402 games for Kent and went up the following year to Oxford where he won three blues and captained the university in 1954. That year he was a surprise selection for the MCC tour of Australia under Len Hutton. In the third Test, at Melbourne, he made the first and arguably the best of his 22 Test hundreds – 102 out of 191 – which helped England win the Ashes. After the tour he decided not to go back to Oxford.

For the next fifteen years he was an automatic choice for England and also captained Kent from 1957-1971. His record was outstanding – 42,719 first class runs, 7624 for England, the first cricketer from any country to play 100 Tests (and making a century against Australia in the hundredth), and Captain of England on more than twenty occasions. He was also a wonderful slip catcher, holding the record at the time of 120 catches in Tests. He retired from the game finally in 1975.

After cricket he devoted himself increasingly to cricket administration and to charitable causes. In 1986-7 he was President of MCC and then from 1989-1993 Chairman of the International Cricket Council, helping to bring South Africa back into the fold of Test cricket. He was knighted in 1992 for services to cricket and then became a life peer in 1997 as Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge, continuing to travel the world to help promote the spirit of the game he loved. He was also much in demand as a speaker and gave large amounts of time to helping charities, including the Lords’ Taverners, of which he was President. He was Master of the Skinners’ Company, a governor of his old school and President of the Old Tonbridgian Society. He died of a heart attack in 2000. No Old Tonbridgian brought more honour or joy to his old school in the twentieth century than Colin Cowdrey, who was perhaps the best loved Test cricketer of his generation.