Anthony Robert Lewis CBE was born on 6 July 1938 and is a Welsh former cricketer, who captained England, became a journalist, went on to become the face of BBC Television cricket coverage between 1986 and 1998, and became president of the Marylebone Cricket Club.
39 Facts About Tony Lewis
1.
2.
Tony Lewis was born in Swansea, the first of two children of Wilfrid Lewis and his wife Marjorie.
3.
Tony Lewis represented the Welsh Secondary Schools v England Schools at cricket for five years and captained his country for three of them.
4.
Tony Lewis played cricket for the Royal Air Force and Combined Services.
5.
Tony Lewis was elected President of the Christ's College Marguerites and in 1962, President of the University Hawks Club, residence of the highest achievers in all Cambridge sports.
6.
Tony Lewis made his first-class cricket debut in 1955 at the age of 17, playing for Glamorgan against Leicestershire in the County Championship while still at Neath Grammar School.
7.
Tony Lewis was an amateur cricketer until the governing bodies of cricket decided that all first-class cricketers should sign professional playing contracts beginning in the 1963 season.
8.
Tony Lewis was chosen as a first violinist by the National Youth Orchestra of Wales in 1955.
9.
Tony Lewis captained Cambridge in his final season there in 1962, when in all matches he made 2188 runs at 40.51, with five centuries.
10.
Tony Lewis topped 2000 runs in 1966, when he made 2190 runs, more than anybody else in the season, at 40.51, including his only double-century, 223 against Kent at Gravesend after Glamorgan had followed on.
11.
Tony Lewis captained Glamorgan from 1967 to 1972, taking the county to its second championship in 1969, when Glamorgan went through the season undefeated.
12.
Tony Lewis is the last man to captain England on his Test debut.
13.
Tony Lewis scored 70 not out in his debut Test in Delhi, which guided England to their first Test victory in India since 1951.
14.
England lost the next two Tests, but Tony Lewis went on to score his maiden Test hundred in the Fourth Test in Kanpur.
15.
Tony Lewis was nominated Man of the Match in both the Delhi and the Kanpur Tests.
16.
Tony Lewis went on to captain England eight times, winning once, losing twice and drawing five times.
17.
Tony Lewis remains the only Glamorgan player to captain England and the only one to lead England on a major Test tour abroad.
18.
Tony Lewis sat on MCC committees from 1967 and on a long succession of MCC and ECB boards and committees, until he founded MCC's World Cricket Committee in 2006 which he chaired until 2011.
19.
Tony Lewis was the thirty-first MCC member to be so honoured.
20.
Tony Lewis played rugby union for Neath and Gloucester before winning a blue for Cambridge in The Varsity Match in 1959.
21.
Chronic knee trouble, which had curtailed his rugby career, meant that Tony Lewis retired from cricket at the age of 34, but writing and broadcasting had always been his main pursuit since 1965, when he began writing rugby union reports for The Daily Telegraph.
22.
Tony Lewis was a founding member of the Sports Council for Wales in 1968 and put in long service to Glamorgan County Cricket Club as chairman, chairman of cricket followed later as president and trustee.
23.
Tony Lewis's broadcasting extended from Test Match Special to the anchor man of all of BBC television's coverage of cricket, from 1975 to 1999, and he was the initial presenter of the popular Radio 4 magazine programme, Sport on Four.
24.
Tony Lewis was MCC President for two years, during which he joined with his predecessor Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie in the work of securing admission to the Club of women members and securing their playing programme while Ch.
25.
Tony Lewis became, in 2011, the 31st Honorary Life Vice-President of MCC to be nominated by the Club, the highest honour possible to award to a Member.
26.
Tony Lewis turned his high profile in cricket and broadcasting to the benefit of his home country's tourist board.
27.
Tony Lewis urged what he called event-led tourism to Wales; this bore fruit immediately as Wales hosted the Rugby World Cup in 1999, and was followed by his personal leadership between 2000 and 2002 of the successful Wales bid to stage a Ryder Cup on Welsh soil for the first time, at Celtic Manor, Newport, in 2010.
28.
Tony Lewis worked for the University College of Wales, Newport, as a consultant for five years.
29.
Tony Lewis's sporting contribution continued as captain of Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in 2012.
30.
Tony Lewis served eight years as chairman of the Wales Tourist Board and as a member of the British Tourist Authority.
31.
Tony Lewis was a founding Trustee of the Wales Millennium Centre.
32.
Tony Lewis led the research into the Television Review System ; with his predecessor he secured a two-thirds majority of 18,000 MCC members to win women's admittance into full MCC membership.
33.
Tony Lewis led the research and development of the use of the pink cricket ball for day-night Test cricket in order to arrest declines in attendances, especially in the Southern Hemisphere.
34.
Tony Lewis chaired and led MCC's work to erect an iconic media centre in 1998 which won high architectural awards.
35.
Tony Lewis served a year as High Sheriff of Mid Glamorgan for 1998.
36.
Tony Lewis was awarded the CBE for services to cricket, broadcasting and Wales, in the 2004 New Year Honours.
37.
Tony Lewis is an honorary Fellow of several Welsh universities: Cardiff, Swansea and University of Glamorgan.
38.
From 2003, Tony Lewis was a consultant to University College of Wales, Newport, and, having returned to live in Porthcawl in 2010 accepted the offices of Captain, Royal Porthcawl Golf Club and President, Wales, of the Lord's Taverners charity, both organisations among his lifetime allegiances which he still continues.
39.
Tony Lewis continued his freelance writing particularly as a weekly columnist for the Western Mail Magazine, launched January 2015 and in a wide range of freelance work.