Alf Gover: 13 famous cricketing students of one of game’s best player-makers

A jack of all trades, Alf Gover was a journalist besides being a cricketer, trainer and technical adviser of 1953-film ‘The Final Test’. He even served the army during the 1939-45 War as a company sergeant major, before rising to the rank of major.

Alfred Richard ‘Alf’ Gover, born February 29, 1908,  was a Surrey and England cricketer who went on to become an internationally reputed coach after his playing days. A jack of all trades, Gover was also a journalist besides being a cricketer, trainer and technical adviser of 1953-film ‘The Final Test’. He even served the army during the 1939-45 War as a company sergeant major with the Army Physical Training Corps, before rising to the rank of major. While playing a mammoth 362 First-Class games, including four Tests for England, Gover simultaneously became proprietor of the indoor cricket school under his name.

His school, financed in 1928 by future father-in-law Bill Brooke in partnership with two Surrey and England cricketers, Andy Sandham (who scored the first ever Test triple-century) and Herbert Strudwick, became a training ground for young players from several countries, notably India, Pakistan and the Caribbean. Gover would later buy Strudwick’s share in 1938 and Sandham’s share in 1946, thus becoming the sole owner of the school. He employed Arthur Wellard and John McMahon, both of whom represented England, Surrey and Somerset, as coaches at his indoor training school. His work in the field of cricket coaching earned him an MBE in 1998. On his 108th birth anniversary, Chinmay Jawalekar lists down 13 famous wards of the cricketer-turned-coach, who was the oldest cricketer when he died.

1. Frank Tyson: ‘Typhoon’ Tyson was one of Govers’ famous disciples. Tyson, who scalped 76 wickets from 17 Tests with his lightning-fast speed,was immensely benefitted by Gover’s coaching. While covering the 1954–55 Ashes tour as a journalist, Gover advised Tyson to shorten his run-up; the rest, as they say, was history. Tyson blew away the Australians almost single-handedly, finishing with 28 wickets from 5 Tests. Len Hutton’s England retained The Ashes on Australian soil.

2. Colin Cowdrey: Cowdrey, the first cricketer to play 100 Tests, went to Gover’s cricket school for three weeks aged 13. Cowdrey was enrolled at Tonbridge School so that he could qualify for Kent. Impressed by his batting, Gover told Tonbridge coach Ewart Astill that Cowdrey should join the First XI immediately, something that was not common for first-year pupils. Cowdrey excelled at the trials, where he was four years younger than others, and never really looked back.

3. Tom Graveney: Graveney, too, was a pupil of Gover. Learning the nuances of the game from his master, Graveney went on to play 79 Tests and massive 772 First-Class games, and reached heights seldom scaled by batsmen after 40.

4. Garry Sobers: Arguably the greatest all-rounder of all time, Sobers visited Gover in 1960 to fine-tune his skills. Sobers was a regular feature of televised Sunday Cavaliers matches and on tours run by journalist-entrepreneur Ron Roberts and coach Gover. He went on to score over 8,000 runs and picked 235 wickets in his 93-Test career.

5. Rohan Kanhai: A 79-Test veteran and Sobers’ contemporary and colleague, Kanhai is another famous Gover student. A West-Indian cricketer of Indian origin, Kanhai and Sobers formed one of the deadliest middle-order pairs in history.

6. Ken Barrington: Barrington was also an Alf Gover ward. Not only did Barrington learn from Gover, he also passed on his teachings to later generations. At the end of a very successful 1957-58, Barrington taught cricket in South Africa on Gover’s request. He acceded to his tutor’s request with no tour in sight over the winter. He apparently rented out his house in London, moved to Cape Town and coached the First and Second XIs at the Roman Catholic St Joseph’s College, set up a Under-11 side in his free time and met a talented Cape Coloured cricketer called Basil D’Oliveira.

7. Hanif Mohammad: The original little master, Hanif was one of the first Asian cricketers to train under Gover. Stuart Wark once wrote in ESPNCricinfo that a young Hanif was sent to England to work with Gover in his cricket school. So amazed was Gover by Hanif’s technique that he reportedly did not ask him to make any alterations. He told Hanif that he could not possibly coach him; Hanif had it all, so there was not anything that Gover could teach him.

8. Fred Titmus: Gubby Allen sent Titmus to Gover. Titmus used to be a seamer at the time, and it did not seem he was going to be much good. Allen suggested Gover made a spinner out of Titmus. It took Gover a week: Titmus had short fingers for a spinner, so Gover suggested he used three of them to get purchase on the ball and to help him develop some turn and control.

9. Viv Richards: Richards was one of the greatest cricketers to emerge from Gover’s indoor school, which was set back from a garage on East Hill, in Wandsworth, South London. One of the finest pupils of Gover, Richards went on to play 121 Tests and 187 ODIs for West Indies.

10. Sunil Gavaskar: Gavaskar is also a Gover alumnus. The Little Master was a regular visitor at the school and could often be seen practising under the watchful eyes of Gover and getting his technical flaws corrected.

11. Andy Roberts: One of the deadliest fast bowlers ever to play cricket, Roberts was a pupil of Gover. Unlike the modern era, where a cricketer gets trained by multiple coaches while playing for different teams throughout the year, Roberts received only “six weeks of coaching” in his life, at the Alf Gover School, where he learnt “the value of follow-through”.

12. Brian Lara: One of the greatest left-handed batsmen the game has ever witnessed, Lara, too, was sent to Gover as a teenager to learn cricket. “He had plenty of natural ability,” Gover once wrote of Lara in The Cricketer, adding “and we concentrated on enlarging his range of stroke play.”

13. Ian Bishop: Another impressive product of the West Indian pace factory, Bishop was trained by Gover. Bishop tool 161 Test and 118 ODI wickets during his decade long career with the Caribbean side.

(A self-confessed cricket freak, Chinmay Jawalekar is a senior writer with CricLife and CricketCountry. When not writing or following cricket, he loves to read, eat and sleep. He can be followed here @CricfreakTweets)