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
At the start of his career the England batting was fragile and Cowdrey never forgot that his wicket was too important to throw away, sometimes treating bowlers too cautiously for a man of his great talents, John Arlott commenting "Cowdrey could sink into pits of uncertainty when the fire ceased to burn, allowing himself to be dominated by bowlers inferior to him in skill". Cowdrey himself thought that "the proudest thing in my career was that I kept surviving", playing Lindwall and Miller at 21 and Lillee and Thomson at 41, still able to move immaculately into line even though he hadn't played for months. His quick reflexes also made him an outstanding slip, whose 120 catches was a Test record for a fielder. In his youth, Cowdrey was a useful leg-spinner at club level, but only took 63 first-class wickets at a cost of 51.21 apiece. He claimed if Alan Knott hadn't misread a googly he would have picked up a Test wicket, though his son Chris wrote "I can't see Knotty losing sleep over that one". In Cowdrey's last Test at Melbourne the fans famously hung out a banner 'M.C.G. FANS THANK COLIN – 6 TOURS', with Cowdrey "wearing a large straw sun-hat ... signing endless autographs, posing for photographs and exchanging friendly talk with young and old in the way that has made him as popular a cricketer as has ever visited Australia".