By Kevin Redsull

Derek Towe has reached the pinnacle of his near 60-year cricketing career as a member of the England over-70s team touring Australia.

The Betteshanger Colliery Welfare all-rounder is part of a 17-strong England squad who will play 11 matches Down Under, including three one-day internationals against Australia’s over-70s team, after he helped Kent win the National Over-70s Cup.

Kent beat Suffolk by 38 runs in the final in September.

That followed on from Towe being a member of the Kent side who won the National Over-60s Cup in 2016 and 2021. But it was in the summer of 1963 Towe, aged just 11, was called up to join his father Roy - another Betteshanger stalwart - to play in a match against Tilmanstone Ravens, starting his 59-year association with the Welfare Ground club.

Trials with Surrey while he was a pupil at Dover Grammar School for Boys came to nothing, so he trained as a PE teacher and had a successful career at Dane Court Grammar School, and, in fact, he still helps at the Broadstairs school when needed.

But for the next month or so, his focus will be on playing cricket.

Towe, who turned 70 in December, said: “I’m so pleased and proud to be picked for an England Seniors side.

“The pool of players you have to pick from for the over-70s team is, obviously, smaller than it is for the over-50s and over-60s teams. But we have a very skilful squad with a wealth of knowledge and tremendous cricketing careers.”

Towe, who lives in Eastry, near Sandwich, knows England are likely to have to call upon all that vast experience when they take on their Australian counterparts in the one-day internationals.

He added: “The last time the England over-70s team toured Australia, in 2018, they were beaten in all the one-day internationals and I’m sure it’s going to be equally tough this time around.”

The opening match of the tour is a friendly against a Regional XI in Queensland tomorrow (Sunday) when Towe will hope to lay claim to one of the all-rounder slots for the opening ODI in Brisbane on February 5.

In the tour programme, he is described as “a steady left-handed batter who rarely sells his wicket cheaply, and he is also a useful slow-medium paced bowler in the typical England trundler mode.”

Under senior team rules, a person who is 69 can play in an over-70s side and Towe played in all 15 of Kent’s over-70s matches last year, scoring 660 runs at an impressive average of 110 and the England party will hope he can reproduce that kind of form.

It’s the first time he has visited Australia and he said: “It’s such an exciting prospect and I’m very grateful to the two local businessmen who have made generous contributions to the tour sponsorship fund to help make it possible - Graham Stiles, the landlord of the Kings Head pub in Deal, and Gary Fairhall from The Mortgage Shop in Broadstairs.”