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
Though seen as Peter May's natural successor, Cowdrey failed to hold onto the England captaincy for any length of time as he suffered a number of inconvenient injuries. Gall-stones in 1962 gave the captaincy to Ted Dexter, a broken arm to Mike Smith in 1963 and a ruptured Achilles tendon to Ray Illingworth in 1969, and in each case the temporary replacement was retained after Cowdrey had recovered. It was a great disappointment to him that he never led the MCC tour of Australia despite six tours there, four times as vice-captain. After losing the First Test against Australia in 1968 he won 1 and drew 6 of the next 7 Tests, which Illingworth extended to a record run of 27 Tests without defeat until the last Test of 1971.