OnThisDay 4th Sep 1978 cricket lost one of the prominent historian and writer Rowland Bowen; author of Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development throughout the World. Roland also published cricket quarterly. There is a famous incident described in the Daily Mirror Sydney edition. He was an emergency commissioned to the British Indian Army in 1942.

“At Eastbourne Hospital (Sussex) surgeons in an emergency operation ‘tidied up’ the limb, which had been cut off below the knee. A doctor said: ‘The major seems to be realizing the foolishness of his action.’ The Major was known to have a keen interest in amputation. Major Bowen, who works for the Ministry of Defence, is a cricket historian. He is Major Rowland Bowen, 52, a life member of the MCC, who runs a magazine called Cricket Quarterly, and writes on the game for several newspapers.” ~ Sydney’s Daily Mirror

In his own words what prompted him to write “My first impulse to writing anything about the game was solely to correct the error,” Bowen wrote in his book’s introduction. “That led me on, and on. In ten years or so of research and writing I have been astonished at the way long-accepted facts have proved on investigation to have been no facts at all, and much-cherished opinion quite legendary. In establishing many fresh new facts, I hope I have not also laid the foundation for other myths.”

The prominent commentator Arlott writes “Cricket: A history of its growth and development throughout the world by Rowland Bowen is 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 imminent demise of the first-class game”.