Lives in Cricket No 32 - Eric Rowan

44 Regiment, and reaching the rank of lieutenant. Little seems to be known about his war service, but he must have been in the First South African Division as he represented them against The Rest in 1942/43 when they had returned home. He appeared in good form, opening the batting and scoring 15 and 84 in a drawn game. Athol also played, but failed to take a wicket. Some facts of Eric’s war service may be gleaned from family scrapbooks. One undated article has the writer describing South African soldiers boarding ships to take them into battle and he specifically mentions Eric as setting off to join his brother Athol ‘who is already in the north’. Another page in the scrapbook has a photo of Eric waving farewell from a troopship and below it is an article stating that he had been in Ethiopia chasing Italians. That Abyssinian Campaign claimed the life of South African teammate A.W. ‘Dooley’ Briscoe, who had earlier been awarded the Military Cross for gallantry. The north was Egypt and North Africa and while the conflict itself was of paramount importance there was time for some cricket. Games played in Cairo were of a surprisingly high standard with a number of Test cricketers taking part. One match, between the South Africans and the Gezira Sporting Club involved Bruce Mitchell, Pieter van der Bijl, Ronnie Grieveson, Athol Rowan and Ossie Wynne representing the Springboks, while England cricketers Freddie Brown and Wally Hammond, along with New Zealander Sonny Maloney, turned out for the opposition. While he did not play in that match Eric did find time to play some games for the South Africans, scoring 95 against the Gezira Sporting Club and he followed it with 92 against D.H.A. Mackenzie’s XI in the next match. This latter effort was described as ‘a grand innings, but not quite so vigorous as that of Saturday [95], although he scored at a good pace with a variety of strokes all round, seven of which reached the boundary’. Athol was the most successful bowler, taking five for 65 in a drawn game. The younger Rowan’s war service is much better known, as is the injury he suffered which curtailed his cricket career. As a private in the Transvaal Regiment he was captured at Tobruk, but managed to escape. Later he joined the RAF and it was while he was on an officer’s course in North Africa that his left knee was shattered by the recoil from a mortar. The blow severely handicapped him while bowling and was to lead to an early end to his cricketing career. Lost Years