The boy from Bangalore

IN the summer of 1954, the United Planters Association of South India brought out a large illustrated volume to mark its centenary. One chapter dealt with cricket, next only to horseracing the profession's favourite sport. The cricket ground in Ooty adjoined the racecourse, in a part of a foreign field that was forever England. Here was played the annual match between Planters and Gymkhana said, on other Sundays, other matches between teams of white men.

In the UPASI souvenir, the historian of plantation cricket - one W.K.M. Langley - recalled the famous players down the decades, the Burtons and Studds and Kindersleys who had hit hundreds and taken hat-tricks in what used to be known as the Neilgherry Hills. For the decade of the 1920s, Langley singled out E.A. Cowdrey, a careful, orthodox opening batsman who also appeared for the Europeans versus the Indians in the annual Presidency match, played at Chepauk in the week of Pongal. After noting the runs made by Cowdrey in Madras and in Ooty, the historian remarked:

But his greatest achievement was yet to come in his early training of his now famous son. I believe this started on the level site of the old Chundale tea factory. We are all waiting with high hopes the full development of one of the three most promising cricketers in England and it would be interesting if that old factory site passed into cricket history along with the orchard at The Downend near Briston (where W. G. Grace learnt to bat, the balls lobbed gently to him by his mother).

The boy who played his first drives in the Nilgiris was, in fact, born 200 miles away in Bangalore. Mr. Cowdrey would not trust the lone doctor in the hills so, well in time, he escorted his wife to a reliable hospital in the city. It is a road I have myself taken many times, a long, winding road down the hills through the Mudumalai and Bandipur sanctuaries, through arid Chamarajnagar, and then through the lush valley of the Cauvery - Tipu Sultan's country - on to this no-longer Garden City. Thus it was that, in the city in which I write these words, Master Cowdrey saw his first sunset on December 24, 1932. He was baptised at the handsome St. Mark's Cathedral, his given names Michael Colin, designed to provide him with the most famous initials in cricket - M.C.C.

At his school, Tonbridge, Cowdrey was a goodly bowler who batted a bit but, by the time he reached Oxford, he had become a specialist batsman. He reminded the old-timer of Walter Hammond, likewise a master of the offside, likewise a superbly safe first slip. In 1953, he scored two composed half centuries for the University against the visiting Australians. By the next summer, it was not only the United Planters Association of South India who thought him one of the most promising cricketers in England. So did the England captain, Len Hutton, on whose express recommendation Cowdrey was chosen for that winter's tour of Australia. While he was on the ship a telegram came on board stating that his father had died. The taciturn Hutton, thereupon, reached deep into his reserves of emotion and, for the rest of the tour, assumed the role of a foster father.

The lad paid him back handsomely. In the closely fought Melbourne Test, Cowdrey hit his first Test hundred, 101 out of 154 made while he was at the wicket, a knock of high quality that helped win his side the Test. Altogether, he played a crucial part in the winning of the Ashes. But, four years later, he was vice- captain when Richie Benaud's Australians won back the old urn. The home attack this time had a notorious dragger, Gordon Rourke, who used the old, backfoot non-ball law to bowl from 18 yards. Once, when an Australian journalist asked Cowdrey why he did not play Rourke off the front foot, the batsman answered; "For then I will step on his front foot."

Through the 1960s, the England captaincy was shared out between Ted Dexter, Mike Smith, and Colin Cowdrey. In the fashion of the day - a fashion that lasted much too long for England's good - all were University Blues, and all batsmen. By 1968, Dexter and Smith had faded, and Cowdrey seemed set to become captain for half a dozen years, or more. That winter his side achieved a notable win over the West Indies - helped by an over-generous declaration by Gary Sobers - but next summer, the captain was laid low by injury. Ray Illingworth stepped into the breach, and, in 1970-71, Cowdrey was vice-captain for the successful Ashes campaign - the fourth successive time he had held that job in Australia. Three years later he was back, as an ordinary player, summoned in the middle of the tour to replace an injured batsman. He volunteered, aged 40, to open the innings, playing Lillee and Thomson - half his age, and at their terrorising best - with courage and assurance. Both Australian bowlers maintain still that they have not seen a braver batsman.

It was also as a late substitute that Cowdrey made his only tour of India. In the summer of 1963, he broke his arm batting against Wesley Hall, and chose to rest while Mike Smith brought out a side to the subcontinent in the winter. However, in an early match, against West Zone at Poona, Ken Barrington split the webbing of his hand taking a slip catch. He was sent home, and while waiting for his flight at Santa Cruz airport bumped into John Woodcock of The Times. "And to think of all those Test runs that will go begging," complained Ken.

The runs were to be made by Cowdrey, who was flown in as a replacement. He arrived in time for the third Test, in Calcutta. The day before the match Cowdrey came to the Eden Gardens for a net. He placed a Rs. 10 note on his wicket, and invited competitors. A groundsman at the Gardens, Jeevan Mali, bowled him twice in three balls.

But the Indian players were not watching and, in the Test match itself, they would go strictly by reputation. Their captain, the Nawab of Pataudi, had as a young Winchester boy watched the famous Edgbaston Test of 1957, when Peter May and Cowdrey added 411 against the West Indies, padding and kicking Sonny Ramadhin out of Test cricket. Thus when the English master came in to bat in Calcutta, there were no close fielders in sight. Bowling to him was B. S. Chandrasekhar, a raw 18 year-old, but already possessing a bag of tricks as varied as Ramadhin's - a bag, moreover, not exposed to this particular batsman before. In the first over Cowdrey played a couple of balls uppishly in the direction of where silly mid-on might have been. Pataudi brought in Hanumant Singh to field close on the leg side, with Chandu Borde at silly point. Alas, the horse had bolted. For now the ball began finding the middle of the bat, with Cowdrey going on to score 100 in this innings, and his next.

Some 30 years later Cowdrey came back to the land of his birth. He was now Sir Colin, President of the International Cricket Council, and soon to become Lord Cowdrey of Canterbury. But, when he was met at the Bangalore airport by an official of the Karnataka State Cricket Association, he asked to be taken straight to the home of B.S. Chandrasekhar. Chandra had recently been involved in a road accident, and lay in bed. Cowdrey wished to call on his old adversary before he checked into his hotel or inspected the facilities at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. It was a lovely gesture, especially coming from an Englishman.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

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