Farewell to Graham Cowdrey, cricket’s king of the dressing room

So the Good Lord really wants to fill out his team: how else to interpret the passing in recent months of three of the finest footballers of the past century — Jack Charlton, Nobby Stiles and Ray Clemence. All received thoroughly deserved eulogies. All had reached the highest realms of their sport and, though none made it to a very great age, they did at least achieve the biblical milestone of three score years and ten.

All deaths have a depth to their sadness, felt most deeply by immediate family, but not all have an added melancholy that engages us in a quite different way. Graham Cowdrey’s passing in seemingly straitened circumstances after a short illness was such a death. He didn’t reach his three score and ten — he was only 56 — and he didn’t achieve the highest realms of his sport, although he was a mighty fine batsman for Kent for more than decade. He was part of a powerful cricketing dynasty (the son of Colin, of course) so that was no surprise. What made Cowdrey’s passing different — and so affecting — was that his cricketing talent came across as being secondary, bottom of the pile even, to all the other things that made him the man he was.

His later years were scarred by personal and financial difficulties. But those who knew him at a young age remember something unusually likeable about him. You didn’t need a getting-to-know-you process with Cowdrey: he was just natural, warm and very funny. And immensely gifted — quirkily so when the mood took him. He once batted in a chest guard in a 30-over match at Tonbridge School, knowing he was up against a very quick quickie.