1968, First Cricketer to play 100 Test matches
On this day July 11, 1968, England former captain , Colin Cowdrey became the first cricketer to play 100 Test matches.
He celebrating the occasion with 104 against Australia in 1968. It was his 21st Test century.
He played his first (1954) and last (1975)Test match against Australia. Cowdrey played 114 Tests, scoring 7,624 runs at an average of 44.06 and taking 120 catches.
Cowdrey made 22 Test Centuries to match Wally Hammond’s England record, subsequently equalised by Geoff Boycott and exceeded by Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen.
Of the 22 Tests in which Cowdrey made a hundred England won 10, drew 11 and lost 1, when he made 105 against South Africa at Trent Bridge in 1965.
Cowdrey was the first man to score a Test century against six different nations; Australia, South Africa, the West Indies, New Zealand, India and Pakistan, all the Test nations of his day, which he did both home and away.
He made his highest Test score 182 against Pakistan at Oval.
Award
The captain Cowdrey, was awarded a CBE in 1972. He knighted in 1992, ennobled in 1997 and posthumously inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009.
Cowdrey is the fourth (and so far the last) sportsman to be honoured with a memorial service in Westminster Abbey.
