At the age of 84, Bob Cowper, who played 27 Test matches for Australia in the 1960s, passed away.
The left-hander Cowper spent the majority of his first-class cricket career with Victoria, playing in 147 matches between 1959–60 and 1969–70. During that time, he scored 26, hundreds and 10,595 runs at an average of 53.78. Cowper amassed 2061 runs at an average of 2061 in his 27 Test matches, including five hundreds, including the much-celebrated 307 against England at the MCG in 1966. Cowper concluded with 183 first-class wickets, 36 of which came in Test matches. He was also a part-time offspinner.
“Too intelligent and ambitious to linger long in a game offering such modest financial rewards,” Gideon Haigh wrote in ESPNcricinfo, describing his departure from the game at the age of 28 to pursue a career in merchant banking and stockbroking. “Bob Cowper gave up Test cricket at the age of 28, but not before accumulating a strong record of success as a finger-spinner and left-hand batsman. Prior to Matthew Hayden’s 380 in 2003–04, his 12-hour 307 against England in Melbourne in February 1966 was the highest Test innings and the only triple-century on Australian soil.
“His fertile cricket imagination and sense of injustice at the lot of the average Australian cricketer left a strong impression on Ian Chappell, in time a militant campaigner for the rights of his comrades.”
