Lives in Cricket No 32 - Eric Rowan

75 In the original, typed on the stationery of the Randolph Hotel, Oxford, the words ‘and untrue’ were included after ‘unfortunate’ and then crossed out in pencil. Had the apology not been forthcoming he would almost certainly have been sent home. While he might have apologized Eric was still in a bitter mood the next day. He refused to comment and said that his right arm was still painful and he would certainly not sign any autographs. ‘I can hardly hold a bat, let alone a pen,’ he commented to one reporter. The apology was given coverage in most British papers, but The Times made no mention of the incident and did not publish the apology. The Daily Mirror commented that the South Africans must be forming a poor impression of English crowds after Nourse and now Rowan had been barracked for slow scoring. Most were not so forgiving. Sid Pegler hoped the incident would soon be forgotten and C.G. Howard, the Lancashire secretary, said that public performers must expect barracking. Similar thoughts were echoed by many of the journalists. South African Louis Duffus, writing in the Johannesburg Star , felt that Rowan had endured only minor provocation for the sit-down, but that the statements made afterwards deserved some disciplinary action. In all, the whole affair would damage South Africa’s reputation and he later confessed in his autobiography Play Abandoned that he found the whole thing difficult to write about, although he did say that Waite had been the first to sit down and that the players had been told to stand aside if the barracking worried them. In general Duffus considered that it was not a happy tour. In his autobiography 20 th Century Allrounder Clive van Ryneveld wrote that it was indeed Nourse who intervened when Pegler wanted to send Eric home. The future South African captain felt that Eric’s personality caused tensions in the team. In comparing Eric with Nourse, he wrote, ‘Nourse was a steady and quiet leader. Eric was chatty and his brand of conversation and disrespect of convention appealed to some more than others. In the end it created something of a division in the team.’ It is difficult to see what the university-educated van Ryneveld would have had in common with the hard-nosed Eric, although he admitted that as a batsman he had plenty of guts. Van Ryneveld mentioned Eric making an appreciative remark which did not bear repeating when the famous actress Vivien Leigh met the players backstage following a performance. Louis Duffus also mentioned Eric’s irreverent behaviour when he kissed Lady Belper goodbye after a Triumph and Controversy