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Michael Colin Cowdrey, Baron Cowdrey of Tonbridge, CBE (24 December 19324 December 2000), better known as Colin Cowdrey, played for Oxford University Cricket Club (1952–54), Kent County Cricket Club (1950-76) and the England cricket team (1954–75). He was a right hand batsmen who "delighted crowds throughout the world with his style and elegance".〔Graveney, p. 54〕 Cowdrey was the first cricketer to play 100 Test matches, celebrating the occasion with a century against Australia in 1968. In all he played 114 Tests, making 7,624 runs at an average of 44.06, overtaking Wally Hammond as the most prolific Test batsman, and taking 120 catches as a fielder, breaking another Hammond record. Cowdrey made 22 Test centuries (an England record until 2013) and was the first batsman to make centuries against the six other Test playing countries of his era; Australia, South Africa, the West Indies, New Zealand, India and Pakistan, making hundreds against them all both home and away. He toured Australia six times in 1954-55, 1958-59, 1962-63, 1965-66, 1970-71 and 1974-75, equalling Colin Blythe's record, and in his last Test fans hung out a banner 'M.C.G. FANS THANK COLIN – 6 TOURS'.〔 In the First Test at Edgbaston in 1957 Cowdrey added 411 runs in 511 minutes with Peter May against the West Indies, the third highest stand in Test cricket at the time, the highest for the fourth wicket until 2009, the highest stand for England, and the highest stand against the West Indies.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Partnership records )〕 His highest first class score was 307 against South Australia on the MCC tour of Australia in 1962-63, the highest score for the Marylebone Cricket Club overseas and the highest by a tourist in Australia. Cowdrey was awarded a CBE in 1972, knighted in 1992, ennobled in 1997, and posthumously inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Colin Cowdrey inducted into Cricket Hall of Fame )〕 He is the third (and last) sportsman to be given a memorial service in Westminster Abbey, after Sir Frank Worrell and Bobby Moore, and the MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture was inaugurated in his memory. ==Early life== Cowdrey's father, Ernest Arthur Cowdrey, played for the Surrey County Cricket Club Second XI and Berkshire County Cricket Club in the Minor Counties, but lacked the talent to enter first class cricket and his father made him join a bank. Ernest Cowdrey had been born in Calcutta, moved to India to run a tea plantation and played the 1926-27 MCC touring team for the Madras Europeans XI and top scored with 48.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Home of CricketArchive )〕 His mother, Molly Cowdrey (née Taylor), played tennis and hockey. Michael Colin Cowdrey was born on the family estate at Ootacamund, Madras Presidency, although his birthplace was usually misrecorded as Bangalore, 100 miles to the north.〔Colin Cowdrey, ''M.C.C. The Autobiography of a Cricketer'' (1976), p. 1〕 His father made an application for him to join the prestigious Marylebone Cricket Club while still an infant. Cowdrey had no schooling in India, but his father and servants taught him cricket as soon as he could walk.〔Cowdrey, pp. 13-19〕 When Cowdrey was five he was taken to England and attended Homefield Preparatory School, Sutton in 1938-45, where the headmaster Charles Walford instilled in him the purity of batting technique that would become Cowdrey's hallmark. Cowdrey made a century in his first game for the school, but a recount made it only 93 and Jack Hobbs sent him a letter of commiseration and a cricket bat. His parents returned to India in 1938 and because of the Second World War he did not see them again until they came back to Britain in 1945. During the holidays he stayed with relatives in Croydon and Bognor Regis, where he watched dog-fights in the Battle of Britain and on his uncle's farm near Market Bosworth. In 1945 he went to Alf Gover's Cricket School for three weeks and his father enrolled him at Tonbridge School where he could qualify for Kent, Gover telling the Tonbridge coach Ewart Astill that Cowdrey should join the First XI immediately, a rarity for first year pupils. In the team trial match he was 4 years younger than the other boys, but took 17 wickets with his leg spin and became an established part of the team.〔Cowdrey, pp. 37-41〕 Still only 13 in July 1946 he became the youngest player to play at Lord's, for Tonbridge against Clifton, making 75 and 44 and taking 3/58 and 5/33 to win the match by two runs. Tonbridge later established the Cowdrey Scholarships for sporting excellence in his memory.〔(Cowdrey Scholarships ), tonbridge-school.co.uk; accessed 25 November 2014.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Colin Cowdrey」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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