by Mayukh Ghosh
David Frith selected 2000 pictures from over 50,000 for his 'Pageant of Cricket'.
This one was the toughest to get.
Frith got this picture from the subject's wife. This is the only printed picture of Major Rowland Bowen.
Perhaps the oddest man in cricket's history.
In 1968 he tried to cut his foot off just to show that it could be done.
Five years before that, though, he founded the most scholarly magazine on the game. In that he wrote about his dog, and that they had kissed!
But the content was usually rich. During an era in which there were no awards for the best books, the ultimate praise for the authors was Bowen's positive comments about their books.
British cricket writer Douglas Miller had a subscription and when he pointed out in a letter to Bowen that one of the statistical articles made little sense, especially to people with a degree in mathematics, Bowen became impatient.
The chain of letters ended with Bowen writing, " I do not know what you mean by shoddy scholarship. I do know your letters are insolent."
That was Rowland Bowen. Not many knew more about the game but he had his own ways which often led to him quarreling with others.
Murray Hedgcock still has plans of writing the Bowen biography.
The man who, on an average, got three-line obituaries, deserves one.
Major Rowland Bowen was born February 27, 1916.