NORMAN 'Mandy' Mitchell-Innes, who celebrated his 90th birthday last year, has led an extraordinary life by any standards.

A highly talented batsman, he was a double Oxford Blue at both cricket and golf and was capped at cricket by both England and Scotland.

A former Somerset captain, Mr Mitchell-Innes also enjoys the relatively rare distinction of being capped for England while still an undergraduate.

He was recently hailed in The Sunday Times' top ten list of sporting one-cap wonders, and dubbed, "a swashbuckling amateur who played his cricket and chose his clothes with consummate style".

Speaking from the farmhouse in Llantilio Crosseny, near Abergavenny, he shares with his daughter Penny Johnstone, who runs PJ's cook school and catering business, the modest Mr Mitchell-Innes is somewhat embarrassed by the accolade.

"That's tosh. I don't know where they got that from," he said.

On his recent birthday, eminent sports writer Frank Keating paid tribute to him in The Spectator. "For my money, new nonagenarian Mandy remains the most wondrous of all England cricket's one-cap wonders," he wrote.

The Calcutta-born descendant of an ancient Scottish family from Berwickshire, Mr Mitchell-Innes is an old boy of Sedbergh School in Yorkshire.

The story of how he first played county cricket as a teenager is straight out of a Boy's Own storybook.

"I was captain of the Scottish boys' golf team at a championship in Scotland when I got knocked out.

"I got a telegram telling me to catch a train to Somerset from Glasgow because I had been chosen to play against Warwickshire.

"I got my old, gammy-legged gardener to bring my cricket bag up from Minehead to Taunton."

His talents were soon spotted by the eminent 'Plum' Warner, manager of England's infamous Bodyline tour of Australia.

Mr Mitchell-Innes was chosen to play against the touring 1935 South Africans after hitting them all over The Parks for Oxford in the course of scoring 168.

He was chosen for the Trent Bridge test match, where batting at No. 4 he made five runs before falling lbw in a match that succumbed to the rain. He was due to play in the next test at Lord's but told Warner he wasn't up to it on this occasion because of a nasty bout of hay fever.

"When you got to mid-June the hay fever was a damned nuisance. "I said, 'If I drop a slip catch because I'm sneezing and the man goes on to make a hundred, then that would be too bad'.'"

As it turned out, his close friend Errol Holmes replaced him and made ten and eight for England, while 'Mandy' popped down to the Oval for Oxford and tonked Surrey for 132.

That autumn he set sail with the MCC on a tour of Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand. Lasting seven months, such a tour would be unthinkable in modern times.

"I have very fond memories of that tour. I remember playing some golf in the mountains of Ceylon."

He also took the field against the legendary Don Bradman at Adelaide but the mists of time have erased the encounter from his memory.

After returning home, service in the Sudan Political Service beckoned where he spent 17 years under the sweltering skies of the African desert.

"We had some great fun and managed to play the odd cricket. We left in 1954 when they pushed us out."

Returning home to Britain, he found work as the secretary of Vaux Breweries in Sunderland where he spent the next 25 years.

"I gave up my membership of the MCC when I was up in Sunderland and I haven't been down to Taunton for ages.

"I haven't been watching cricket for some time. I'm just getting too old," he said.