Kent Cricket families feature in new book

Sporting history is littered with family connections and nowhere more so than at Kent where the Blighs, Cowdreys, Ealhams, Masters and Walkers have all created cricketing dynasties. Mark Pennell spoke to James Buttler, a Kent supporter and author of Following On, a recently released book exploring the pressures of family rivalry in cricket…

No matter the walk of life you to choose to tread, following in the footsteps of a parent by moving into the ‘family business’ can be fraught with risk, but to do so under the spotlight of the sporting arena also brings a weight of expectation that many players have found too great a burden to carry.

While having a famous surname may occasionally open a dressing room door that might have remained shut for other mere mortals, once over the threshold or over the rope the player with ‘the name’ soon has to cope with comments like ‘He’s not the player his father was’, or ‘He only got a contract because of the family’ and even ‘I’m told his younger brother will be much better!’

Comparison and expectation in double measure can become a mighty millstone weighing around the neck of a young, impressionable cricketer and, as James Buttler discovered in writing Following On, many a player has buckled under the strain.

Buttler, who watched his first cricket match at St Lawrence toward the end of Kent’s glory years of the Seventies – it was the 1977 John Player League game against Yorkshire – starts his literary story with the Cowdreys, recollecting his early memories and comparing Colin’s ‘mighty oak’ of a career to Chris’s ‘bonsai’.

In Buttler’s interviews, Chris, who like his father went on to captain Kent and England, said: “It was an issue, big time to begin with, but I never felt bad about it because of the advantages I got when I arrived at Kent.

Some really good players would come down for trials and get 20 minutes and were judged pretty quickly. Some of them never even got a Second XI game.

“I was given Second XI cricket at a young age. I didn’t do very well but was given more opportunities and I ended up breaking through. It was an unusual situation to go into a dressing room that had nine or ten players that had played with the old man.”

Cowdrey concedes that he was often sledged on the field over his family ties. He added: “I got it most of the time, more so up north where there was a sledging mentality between north and south.”

Recalling one verbal volley and bouncer barrage from Leicestershire’s Ken Higgs, who was allegedly disgruntled that Colin had not selected him for England, Chris added: “He never let me forget about it, and I got a tirade of abuse. You just lived with it.”

And, according to Cowdrey, the name-calling intensified 500 times over once he won selection to the England Test squad to tour India in 1984.

He said: “What happens then is you have a bit of self-doubt as you know people are talking about the old man all the time. He played over 100 Tests, got a hundred just about everywhere and won a series in India. It all started again, but it didn’t bother me for very long.”

Buttler also talked with Chris’s sibling, Graham, who nowadays works for the ECB as one of its band of cricket liaison officers, and Graham’s nephew, Fabian, who, at the age of 24, turned his back on cricket to pursue a career in song-writing and the media.

Indeed, when writing his book the author found the Cowdrey connections to be the most complex of the dynasties he covered.

“I found it fascinating talking to Chris and Graham as I’d watched them playing cricket at young men. I saw their father play for an Old England XI and he was a huge figure in cricket, but to have two sons reacting very differently to the same situations and stimuluses was very interesting.

“Chris was far more confident of the two and the one who tried hardest to model himself differently to get away from comparisons with his Dad, whereas Graham admitted he reacted very differently and that changed his career.”

In his book, Buttler also reveals the first time he saw a young Mark Ealham on the St Lawrence outfield taking part in a lunch interval catching competition, which was also being watched by Mark’s famous father, Alan, regarded by many as one of the county’s finest out-fielders.

Even at a tender age, Mark concedes he felt the pressures of ‘following on’ and experienced a determination to do well so as not to disappoint his father or dampen the expectation of supporters.

“I wanted to catch a few, otherwise everyone would have said I wasn’t as good a fielder as Dad,” said Mark. “He’s always said to me you could influence games with a bit of brilliant fielding as much as with bowling.”

Alan also recalled the catching competition and his son’s ‘tunnel vision’ on the day. He said: “That’s part and parcel of being a name. You’ll find in most sports, in acting and other public professions that a lot of them follow their parents and people will pay them extra attention.”

Mark’s young sons George and Tommy could yet extend the Ealham dynasty as both are promising young cricketers, but Mark is keen not to build anticipation or over-analyse the technique of his lads.

He added: “When you see they’ve got talent and they don’t get runs you sit in a deckchair and worry but, like my Dad tells me, it will unfold and whatever happens will happen.

He always said to me ‘If you are good enough no one will stop you’. But if they get a couple of noughts you can feel the pressure of them being ‘a son of’ and I don’t want them to have that.”

Elsewhere in Following On, Buttler explores the difficulty of self-identity, whether possessing a famous name does indeed open doors and discovers if youngsters have shied away from cricket specifically to avoid sporting comparisons.

The likes of Dean Headley, Liam Botham, Mark Butcher, Nick Compton, Brett D’Oliveira, David Lloyd, Ryan Sidebottom, Alec Stewart and Chris Tremlett all give their take on what is a fascinating topic.

James Buttler spent six years at Yorkshire County Cricket Club as media manager. He is now a freelance journalist, author and broadcaster. Following On is published by Great Northern Books and is available in bookshops from £10.99 or online at www.greatnorthernbooks.co.uk