Most towns would be happy to have produced even one cricketing legend - but Tonbridge lays claim to two.

Firstly, there is perhaps the most famous name in cricket - even 20 years after his death - that of Colin Cowdrey.

Mr Cowdrey (full name Michael Colin Cowdrey) was educated as a border at Tonbridge School before going on to Oxford, and there is a blue plaque dedicated to his memory on the wall of Ferox Hall in Tonbridge High Street.

He played cricket for Oxford University, for Kent County Cricket Club, and ultimately, from 1954 till 1975, for England.

He was the first cricketer to play in 100 test matches - a record he achieved in style by scoring 104 runs against Australia in 1968 playing as the English captain.

His highest score in first class cricket was 307 against South Australia on the MCC tour of Australia in 1962.

He eventually clocked up 114 tests.

Known as a gentleman player and praised as an ambassador for the sport, Cowdrey also had his lighter side.

In August 1969, he returned to the crease for the first time after three months recovery from injury to play at The Grove in Sittingbourne in a benefit match for his Kent County team-mate Alan Dixon.

The unusual thing about the match was that it was a Kent men's team against a national women's XI - and playing with Cowdrey in the men's side was Liverpool pop star Gerry Marsden - of Gerry and the Pacemakers and You'll Never Walk Alone fame.

The men won, but only just - the score was 215 v 202. Cowdrey contributed 39, Gerry Marsden sadly managed only a single before heading back to the dressing room.

Cowdrey was made a CBE in 1972, he was knighted in 1992, and eventually in 1997 enobled as a Lord. He chose to be known as Baron Cowdrey of Tonbridge.

Aside from his blue plaque, he is remembered by the Colin Cowdrey Stand at the Spitfire St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury.

His death in December, 2000, from a heart attack, aged 67, was followed by a memorial service at Westminster Abbey, where among the cricket fans who paid him tribute was the former Prime Minister John Major, who said: "He left us too soon, but it was a gem of an innings. He lived life with a clear eye, a straight bat and a cover drive from heaven."

Tonbridge also claims to a much earlier cricketing hero - and 'hero' here really is perhaps the right word.

Colin Blythe was actually born in Deptford in 1879, one of 13 children. He was an engineering fitter at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, before starting his professional cricketing career after passing a trial at The Angel Ground in Tonbridge in 1898. The Angel at the time was the location of Kent Cricket Club's "nursery school" to develop new players.

Blythe moved to 29 Goldsmid Road in Tonbridge, where there is now a blue plaque to his memory.

He met Janet Gertrude Brown, from Tunbridge Wells, in 1906 and they married in 1907, living in Tonbridge and with Blythe continuing to work at Woolwich Arsenal or for the Maxim Gun Company during the off-season.

Blythe was a left-handed bowler, but a right-handed batsman.

He played for Kent from 1899 to 1914. He turned out in 439 matches and took 2,503 wickets - an average of almost six per game.

He is regarded as one of the greatest bowlers in cricket history - one of only 33 players to have taken more than 2,000 wickets in a first-class career. For many years, he held the record for the highest number of first-class wickets (17) taken in a single day's play, although he was surpassed by Jim Laker's 19.

Blythe also played 19 tests - nine against Australia and 10 versus South Africa - and was the Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1904.

It is thought that Blythe had in any case been planning on giving up the game at the end of the 1914 season and taking up a post of cricket coach at Eton School.

However, the First World War intervened.

Blythe was an epileptic and could have been excused duty. Instead he volunteered for service and enlisted initially with the Kent Fortress Royal Engineers in Tonbridge.

Later he transferred to 12th Pioneer Battalion of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, which comprised mostly Yorkshire miners. How Blythe fitted in is not known - he was said to be a sensitive and artistic man, he was a talented violinist playing for the London Music Hall Orchestra and the Tonbridge Symphony Orchestra.

However Blythe was soon promoted to sergeant.

The Pioneers were working on laying a light railway line on November 8, 1917, during the Second Battle of Passchendaele, when a piece of shrapnel from a shell burst passed through the photograph of Blythe's wife that he carried in his breast pocket and entered his heart. He was 38.

He is buried at Oxford Road Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery, near Ypres in Belgium.

He is remembered by the Colin Blythe Memorial at the Spitfire Ground in Canterbury and also has a road named after him in Tonbridge.

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