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 served in the Indian Army and spent many years in Egypt, Sudan and India before returning to England in 1951 and transferring to the Royal Engineers as a Captain, working at the War Office and ultimately being promoted to the rank of Major.

He became involved in cricket research and history in 1958 and, in 1963, he founded the magazine The Cricket Quarterly which ran until 1970. He is best known for his book Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development throughout the World which has been described as "indispensable" but also as "spikily controversial and vigorously wide-ranging". 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".