David Gower was guest speaker at Cambridge Sporting Club gathering

England cricketing legend David Gower recalled his warm-up matchers at Fenner's as he returned to the city to speak at the Cambridge Sporting Club's autumn luncheon.

Acknowledged as one of the game’s greats, Gower captained his country in the 1980s and during his vintage years was described as one of the most stylish batsmen of his generation.

Ahead of the luncheon, he told the Cambridge Independent: “It’s part of what I do nowadays to augment a crust. I travel around the country quite a bit doing speeches here and there – hopefully in the spirit of entertainment and not so much in terms of education.”

Gower noted that the last time he was in Cambridge was “a long time ago” when he played at Fenner’s.

“During my county career for Leicestershire – not so much for Hampshire – we’d come here normally at the start of the season and have a bit of a warm-up against the university,” he recalled, “enjoy the town, ease our way into a season – it used to work pretty well.”

On the current England team, the guest speaker said: “Well they’ve got an interesting month coming up now against Sri Lanka because we have new faces, we have new challenges, and I’ll be quite interested to see how those new faces get on. That’s going to be very important looking ahead to next summer when the Ashes are back on our soil again.”

In an international career that lasted from 1978 to 1992, the left-handed batsman scored an impressive run total of more than 8,000 – the fourth highest by an English player, behind Alec Stuart, Graham Gooch and Alistair Cook in first place.

Following his retirement in 1993, Gower, who scored 18 Test centuries, went on to enjoy a highly successful career as a broadcaster and television personality.

Sponsored by COEL and Carter Jonas, the event was held at DoubleTree by Hilton Cambridge Hotel at Granta Place, Mill Lane, on Friday (November 2).

Neil Cook, managing director at COEL, said: “Fascinating insights from the legendary David Gower surrounded by great company. Thank you to Southern Sporting Clubs for once again providing an excellent speaker to entertain our guests.

“We are very proud that the Phoenix Trust, who are our chosen charity, was the adopted charity and £1,800 was raised for this very worthy cause.”