Obituary: Athol Rowan

IMMEDIATELY after the Second World War, when off-spin was still a potent force in Test cricket, the three best off-break bowlers were Jim Laker of England, Ian Johnson of Australia and Athol Rowan of South Africa. Laker, by taking 19 wickets in one Test in 1956, became a legend; Johnson went on to captain Australia and become secretary of the Australian Cricket Board; Rowan was a hero.

During the war, as an 18-year-old volunteer he had joined the Transvaal Scottish and was taken prisoner at Tobruk. Escaping, he volunteered to join the South African Air Force and while on an officers' training course suffered a severe knee injury from an exploding mortar bomb. He refused to surrender a cricket career and when the Currie Cup competition resumed in 1946 he shuffled up to bowl, his damaged leg fortified by an iron brace.

He was successful enough to be chosen for South Africa's tour of England in 1947, a summer of unending sunshine and flat pitches, and although he was hammered in the Tests, 12 wickets at an average of 59, he finished the leading wicket-taker (102) and exercised the critics with his success against Len Hutton, the batsman regarded as having the best defence.

He and his brother Eric, the opening batsman and often a member of his leg trap, appeared together in 10 Tests but Athol's Test career was necessarily short, bowling, as he often did, in pain. He had a tall, high action with an unusual grip, spinning off the index finger and holding the ball with the seam upright, rather than across, in the traditional manner of spinners. He thus tended to be a little quicker through the air than many of his type with extra bounce, and his control of the seam meant his "arm ball" was more difficult to pick.

He took 24 wickets against England in their 1948-49 tour of the then Dominion and reached his apogee with the visit of Australia a year later. Bowling for Transvaal he took 15 wickets in the match, for 68, his first innings figures reading 9-19 in 15.4 overs. A cartilage operation prevented his playing in the Test matches but he did tour England with the 1951 South Africans, taking 5-68 in England's second innings of the first Test.

He had an affable, easy- going temperament, ideal for the sometimes heartbreaking task of bowling spin, but at the age of 30 his physical handicap meant he had to retire with 54 wickets from his 15 Tests at an average of 38 and a score of invisible medal ribbons for bravery.

All the great batsmen of his day held him in the highest regard. He took Hutton's wicket 11 times, more often than Ray Lindwall, thus promoting a theory that Hutton was susceptible to off-break bowling. Hutton, in turn, regarded him and Laker as the two most difficult off-spinners to counter. Many would argue that Rowan had the edge on good pitches.

John Arlott, writing on Rowan's retirement, described him as "the finest off-break bowler in the world":

He played substantially less than 188 first-class matches in which the knee injury that was to eventually end his career was always both a physical handicap and a psychological brake which he had consciously to override with every ball he bowled.

And of his bowling in the Leeds test in 1947:

in an atmosphere like a steam chamber he bowled unrelieved for three and a half hours on that batsman's wicket to yield only 89 runs to Hutton, Washbrook, Charlie Barnett, Bill Edrich and Compton . . . he earned

all the five wickets that fell; he took only one.

Rowan had endured seven operations on knee and leg when he made his last tour in 1951. According to Arlott, he thought he would never get past the second Test, at Lord's, but by packing his knee in a parcel of cotton wool and plaster he made it to the last, at the Oval, where he ensured his place in history when Hutton, sweeping, lobbed up the ball and then swatted at the ball, thinking it might fall on his stumps, as Russell Endean moved round to take the catch. Hutton became the only Test batsman to be given out for obstructing the field.

Rowan dismissed Peter May next ball but England won comfortably, Rowan dragging himself off the field "alone and quietly", saying to Arlott as he passed: "I shall never play again."

He would have taken great satisfaction from the fact that he was succeeded by South Africa's greatest off-spinner, Hugh "Toey" Tayfield, as South African cricket entered an era of supremacy that would have made them world champions but for the baleful advance of apartheid and the sanctions that followed.

Athol Rowan, cricketer: born Johannesburg 7 February 1921; died Somerset West, South Africa 21 February 1998.