by Mayukh Ghosh
6 October 1954.
Between Aden and Fremantle.
Geoffrey Howard writes to his wife in England.
" I hope I have made strides with Len. I hope so. He is easy and difficult, chatty and reserved- a whole host of opposites. An enigma in fact. I think he will do well."
40 days later, Len finds himself batting with a young Colin Cowdrey.
"You tackle Benaud. I'll face Davidson."
On a terribly slow turner Alan Davidson is bowling spin.
The way he bats against him is 'good enough to get an Oscar'.
At the end of the day's play, he asks Cowdrey, "How are you then?"
"It's hard work."
"Aye, and what's more, you are not getting paid for it, are you?"
'Classic Huttonism', Cowdrey recalled years later.
When they left for Australia in September, Len manages to speak to Colin Cowdrey's father.
He is clearly worried for his son going away for seven and half months.
They spend 20 minutes.
"I'll look after him.", assures England's first professional captain.
Sixteen years earlier, when Len scored 364 against Australia, Ernest Cowdrey broke the news to his five year old son.
And from that day, this boy began worshiping Hutton.
Everyone from that generation did.
He was the first hero of as varied a lot as David Frith, Patrick Eagar and Andrew Collomosse!
The batsman Hutton enchanted one and all.
No one tackled Jack Iverson better.
But he was not the most approachable of men. Nothing compared to standards set by the likes of Hammond but still enough to raise eyebrows when he was elected the captain of the M.C.C.
Ernest Cowdrey passes away three weeks later.
Exactly three weeks after his son finds another 'father'.
After getting the news Colin spends the afternoon alone in his room. At dinner table,he feels a hand on his shoulder.
" I am sorry."
Len says those words with tears in his eyes.
And then walks away.
He needed hours to say those three words to the young man.
But that is how he is.
An enigma.
During the press conferences he sounds very modest about his team's chances and remains silent for about thirty seconds before answering any of the questions.
He is a different man by the end of that tour.
In New Zealand, in a reception in Auckland, he repeatedly calls the Governor 'Sir Norroughly Willie'.
He sounds confident and is more outspoken.
The only minor problem is that the name of the Governor actually is Sir Willoughby Norrie.
He is at his best when they play a Queensland Country team at Rockhampton.
They bat first and score 317.
On a terrible pitch.
At the end of the day one of the organisers asks him if they could patch it up a bit.
Against the rules but Len, to the surprise of his teammates, agrees to the proposal because in his words 'it is anyway friendly cricket'.
With two balls of the last over in the match left, the locals find themselves eight down in their second innings.
A draw against the touring MCC side would be quite a feather in their caps.
Not to be.
Len walks off the pitch, finds the official who asked for his permission to repair the pitch, and says, " This is only friendly cricket anyway, so I am sure you'd like us to forget about the playing hours and finish the match anyway."
Days earlier, he meets EW Swanton after the latter, in his Daily Telegraph column, lambasted the team's efforts in the first Test match.
Swanton has that copy of the newspaper folded under his arm.
A teammate shouts at Len: "Have you seen what The Telegraph said?"
"No. I haven't", comes the calm response.
Then he walks up to Swanton, takes the paper, and turns the pages.
" Yes, I have seen The Telegraph.", he responds after consulting the share prices in the stock market columns.....
Once he scored 37 in a Test match.
A young Harold Pinter heard it on the radio.
Years later he wrote: "Sometimes, when I feel a little exhausted with it all and the world's sitting heavily on my head, I pick up a Wisden and read about Len Hutton's 37 in 24 minutes in Sydney in 1946."
In 1982/83, during Len's last visit to Australia, Scyld Berry asks him if he'd like to meet Bradman.
"No. I don't want to meet him.", comes the swift response.
An enigma.
And Geoffrey Howard was not the only one to find that.
Len Hutton was born on 23 June 1916.