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.
Dudley Owen-Thomas
In 1971 he was secretary of the Cambridge University Cricket Club, and scored 747 runs at 49.80, "hitting the ball with the full sweep of the bat". In the second match of the season he made 108 not out against Leicestershire, adding 175 for the third wicket with his captain, Majid Khan, to take Cambridge to a seven-wicket victory. In the match against Oxford University he scored 146 in just under four hours to enable Khan to declare; the match ended in a draw with Oxford nine wickets down. In 1972, once again secretary to Khan, he made 373 runs at 41.44, and in his last match, against Oxford, he scored 114 in a match when nobody else passed 51, and helped Cambridge to an innings victory, their first victory in the series since 1958 after 11 of the previous 12 matches had been drawn. In 10 matches for Surrey later that season he scored two centuries, and he finished the first-class season with 962 runs at 35.62. He was named the Cricket Writers' Club Young Cricketer of the Year for 1972.