Colin Cowdrey
Cowdrey won a Heath Harrison Exhibition award and a place at Brasenose College at Oxford University to study geography in the autumn of 1951. He played for the Oxford University Cricket Club in 1952 and 1953 at the start of the season and the rest of the summer for Kent. He made 50 and 57 for the Gentlemen vs the 1953 Australians at Lords. In 1954 he captained Oxford University and was a surprise choice for the MCC tour of Australia, replacing Willie Watson. Len Hutton later told him that his selection was a gamble, but it was thought that his technique would be good on the hard Australian wickets. At 21, Cowdrey was the youngest man in the side and the schoolboy photographs used in the brochures made him appear younger. He had yet to make a century in the County Championship, go on tour or play a Test, though he was made twelfth man for the Fourth Test against Pakistan and fielded for 20 minutes, but was so nervous he could barely watch.
Colin Cowdrey
Cowdrey became unaccountably obsessed with defence. His introspective nature made him over-receptive to sterile theory, such as playing with the pad; and lack of self-confidence prevented him from breaking out of his chains. "There were moments," wrote Alan Ross after watching him bat against South Africa at Cape Town in 1957, "when one wanted to send him out a double Scotch and instruct him to take the cotton wool off his bat and really hit it". 
The generosity of the white South African hosts towards the MCC team was almost their undoing Cowdrey remembering "If we were not actually killed by kindness we were certainly reduced to something well short of the fitness that a Test team must maintain ... Our standards dropped alarmingly. It was not fatal at the time for in 1956 South Africa did not have the cricketing resources to expose our indulgence". It was enough to turn a 2–0 lead for the tourists into a 2–2 draw against Clive van Ryneveld's energetic team. The all-rounder Trevor Bailey opened the innings with Peterson and Cowdrey returned to batting at number 5, where he made 331 runs (33.10). He made 59 and took three catches in the First Test at the New Wanderers in Johannesburg and made his second Test century – 101 in 369 minutes – in the Second at Cape Town, which England won by an innings, and batted for 200 minutes making 55 in the second innings of the Fourth back at Johannesburg when Hugh Tayfield took 9/113 in South Africa's 17 run win.