Rowland Bowen

Major Rowland Francis Bowen (27 February 1916 – 4 September 1978 at Buckfastleigh, Devon) was a cricket researcher, historian and writer.

Educated at Westminster, Bowen was emergency commissioned in April 1942 into the Indian Army.[1] He spent many years in Egypt, Sudan and India before returning to England in 1951 and joining the Royal Engineers as a Captain, working at the War Office and ultimately being promoted to the rank of Major.[2]

He became involved in cricket research and history in 1958 and, in 1963, he founded the magazine The Cricket Quarterly which ran until 1970.[2] He is best known for his book Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development throughout the World[3] which has been described as "indispensable" but also as "spikily controversial and vigorously wide-ranging".[4] In John Arlott's review of the book for Wisden, he commented that it was "unique in my experience as a major work on cricket written from a wide view, in disapproval of the game's establishment and in expectation of the demise of the first-class game".[5]

References

  1. ↑ London Gazette 3 July 1942
  2. 1 2 The Cricketer 1978 – obituary.
  3. ↑ Rowland Bowen, Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970
  4. ↑ Eric Midwinter, W G Grace: His Life and Times, George Allen and Unwin, 1981.
  5. ↑ Wisden Cricketer's Almanack 1971.


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