Cowdrey, Bedi, 'Tiger' Pataudi: These and many other cricketers were my first gods and they will be my last

PAUL EDWARDS: When I first thought about writing these pieces I envisaged them as something of a weekly diary. Instead it is becoming a reflective chronicle, an attempt to locate the moments when cricket gripped a very young mind

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It begins with Colin Cowdrey walking out to bat, his left arm in plaster. The drama of the moment is plain, even on our small, grainy monochrome screen.  England need six to win, there are two balls left in the game and David Allen is facing Wesley Hall.

To my pure fury coverage of the Test has been interrupted by the news but at least we have watched these final few overs. Unaware of how fast Hall is bowling, I toy with the idea that Allen might try to hit a six. Instead he defends stoutly and the players run from the field. The recollection is so vivid it might be yesterday. It is my first memory of cricket.

Almost all of you will be able to name the Test Match, the venue and the year: England v West Indies, Lord’s, 1963. The words flow lightly off our tongues as though we are naming a favoured vintage. At the time, though, it was an occasion, a great game which held the attention of a nation in an era when such a monopoly was possible. The next day’s back pages were filled with reports of Brian Close’s bravery, Hall’s endurance, Cowdrey’s pluck, although the latter extended only to standing at the other end and watching Allen block it out.

“The scene when I arrived out in the middle was incredible,” wrote Cowdrey in his autobiography MCC. “David Allen was the calmest man in St. John’s Wood. In contrast, Wesley Hall, now required to win a Test match in two balls at the end of a long day’s bowling, was so excited and tense that his eyeballs were staring out of his head. But he walked round in small circles, apparently seeing nothing. It was at this point that Frank Worrell, already taking up his position at short-leg, had a sudden astute thought. His head flashed round and he called to Hall: ‘Make sure you don’t bowl a no-ball.’ ”

Whatever people in my profession might occasionally think, images arrive before words. Only over time do we clothe our visual impressions with knowledge and context. Only now am I aware that in the old press box above the Warner Stand journalists were watching those final overs at Lord’s, and that among the writers was Alan Ross, whose book,  The West Indies at Lord’s recorded every session of that game in detail and framed the match within the series.

It was the first West Indies tour to England for six years and only the third since the war. It gave English spectators their first full intimation of the glorious dominance of Caribbean cricket, which was founded on their fast bowlers and the uncluttered genius of their batsmen. None of this was missed by Ross, although that hardly explains why I possess four copies of his book.

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Bedi took 266 Test wickets

“Even critics, paid to watch, sometimes wish merely to record gratitude,” he wrote. “No one applauds in the Press Box, but if words can carry feelings as well as facts, then Worrell’s West Indians, back now in their Caribbean islands, must know of them. Images, after all, mean more than statistics and with these they were lavish. Enriching the common idiom of the game, they restored to it not only spontaneity, but style.”

Imagery and style were essential to Ross and I was reminded of their importance earlier this week when I spent £25 on a photograph of the great Indian slow left-armer, Bishan Bedi. It is a side-on picture of the bowler in his delivery stride. The right arm is thrown to the heavens and the left is just about to bowl a ball around which the index and middle fingers are spread at an angle of no more than 30 degrees.

The right foot is poised a few inches above the turf and will remain there forever. In that respect it is a curious complementary echo of Charlie Blythe bowling to Johnny Tyldesley in Albert Chevallier Tayler’s famous painting of Kent’s 1906 game against Lancashire at Canterbury. None of which properly conveys the balance or the beauty of Bedi’s image.

Tony Lewis wrote this about Bedi: “I have always thought that a great clockmaker would have been proud to set Bedi in motion – a mechanism finely balanced, cogs rolling silently and hands sweeping in smooth arcs across his face. Yet it would be wrong to portray him as something less than human – all hardware and no heart – because he bowls with a fiery aggression which belies his genial nature.”

My photograph arrived this morning, along with its provenance. It was taken at Lord’s on April 24, 1967 during the Indian tourists’ first net session following their arrival in England the previous day. The photographer, who worked for the Sport and General Press Agency, had the initials J.L. Across some 53 years I thank him, not least because there is a precious and personal link to that image, too.

By 1967 we were living in Southport and two years earlier I had watched my first County Championship match at Trafalgar Road. However, the early summer of that Indian tour was wretchedly wet and it was decided to move the tourists’ game against Lancashire from a waterlogged Old Trafford to the county’s coastal outground. India fielded three spinners in that rearranged match: Bedi, who bowled slow left-arm, Erapalli Prasanna, who bowled off-spin, and Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, who bowled quick leg-spin and about whom few English batsmen had a bloody clue.

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Bishan Bedi in action

But we also saw the skipper of the touring party, the impossibly exotic Nawab of Pataudi, for whom I had a special fondness because he also played for Sussex. The game against Lancashire lasted three full days, into which the players squeezed 333.1 overs. Bedi’s match figures on a pitch described by Wisden as “easy” were 61-29-87-2.

Just three days after they left Southport India played the first of three Tests, all of which they were to lose. Indeed, given their bad luck with both the weather and injuries, it was probably a thoroughly miserable tour for them. The fact they had captured the heart of a little boy in Lancashire would not have been much compensation.

I visited Trafalgar Road today. Knowing I would be trying to write about Bedi I stood roughly where I sat in 1967 and returned to those days when I was far too young for either cider or Rosie. The ground looked gorgeous but it hurt to see the square unscarred by cricket.

Perfection is suddenly painful and is made all the more so by our groundsmen’s conscientious tending of pitches upon which no one will play for months. Others feel similarly. “Weed shortage in the front garden getting worse,” reported one of my closest friends drily this week. He would prefer to be playing for the Bank of England and letting his garden go hang.

When I first thought about writing these pieces I envisaged them as something of a weekly diary, a record of travels and matches in the English spring and summer. It would have begun at Hove and ended who knows where. Instead it is becoming a reflective chronicle, an attempt to locate the moments when cricket gripped a very young mind and then strengthened its hold into what passes for maturity.

I was at primary school during that Lord’s Test in ’63.  “A solitary child” my parents called me; “Unusual” suggested kindly friends; “Weird” said many others. None of that was troublesome. Cowdrey, Bedi, ‘Tiger’ Pataudi: these and many other cricketers were my first gods and they will be my last. Their images never fade.

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Comments

Posted by Fraser Simm on 22/05/2020 at 14:05

I recall reading the almost magical name of Bhagwat Chandrasekhar who had been called up to play for India in the 1963-64 series v England. He must have been in his early twenties but added a cutting edge to the Indian attack on those dead home wickets. For about 5 years he seemed to be India's most penetrative bowler; I had difficulty in working out which of his arms was affected by polio but I wasn't surprised when he led India to a famous victory over England at the Oval in 1971.

Posted by David Rimmer on 03/05/2020 at 15:03

Wonderful prose from Paul Edwards again - gentle and reflective, it reflected in relative terms more innocent times. It was nice to read Colin Cowdrey being praised _ there have been too many column inches decrying him in recent years. He had his faults but so do all of us. Bedi was a lovely cricketer to watch. His bowling action was so rhythmical. It does not relate to the era that Edwards is describing but I remember when he bowled the last over for Northants in the first innings of the Gillette Cup Final in 1976. David Hughes hit him for 20 plus off it but Bedi sportingly applauded Hughes for it. Would you get that now? There was no time for the commentators to pontificate on it live as Grandstand switched to horse racing (a 3.30pm race or whatever). As for Nawab of Pataudi, he had that class and bearing that would probably look out of place today. Thank you, to Paul Edwards. I am so glad that nobody tried to interfere with your love of cricket.

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