Cricket's Historians

Rowland Bowen causes Ripples had done virtually no research into the press reports of 1875. However Bowen discovered that though the Wisden list was correct for 1875, it was incorrect for two other seasons and Bowen also argued vehemently that the champions list ought to commence in 1865 and not in 1873 (the start date given in the Wisden list of champions). Preston diplomatically added a footnote to Bowen’s essay: “Editor’s Note: Without in any way disputing the conclusions reached by the author, I do not think we can alter the accepted list as regularly published in Wisden for over forty years, even where there are good grounds for disagreeing with it.” After a lapse of some years however, Bowen wore Preston down and the 1963 edition of Wisden finally switches from Preston’s ‘traditional’ list to Bowen’s – by an odd coincidence Bowen’s list moves back one season to 1864 (the 1963 edition of Wisden was its 100 th ). The reactionaries waited until after Bowen’s death to make their move. The popular Playfair Cricket Annual , which was Webber’s baby, changed from Webber’s list to Bowen’s in 1979, but in 1986 chopped out all the early Champions and from then began its list in 1890. In 1997 Wisden copied this new Playfair format. Rowland Francis Bowen, born in London in 1916, was educated at Westminster, then spent much of his adult life working in the Middle East and in India, as a surveyor, policeman and soldier. He returned to England in the 1950s and living at the parental home in Eastbourne worked at the War Office, with the rank of Major. As far as is known he was never an active cricketer of any standing. The protracted debate on the early County Champions with its necessary research and resultant findings, not only forced Bowen to build up a library of books dealing with cricket history but sparked him into action regarding many other historical ‘facts’ which appeared on a regular basis in cricket literature. Too many writers seemed to have been swayed, not by the scholarship of works on cricket history, but on the literary quality, which is not necessarily the same thing. It became apparent that 171