Frederick Lloyd Bowley (9 November 1873 – 31 May 1943) was a

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

er who played

county cricket Inter-county cricket matches are known to have been played since the early 18th century, involving teams that are representative of the historic counties of England and Wales. Since the late 19th century, there have been two county championship ...

for

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see ...

from the 1890s to the 1920s. He also represented the Players against the Gentlemen on four occasions.

Career

Having appeared for Worcestershire on a number of occasions before its elevation to the County Championship, Bowley made his first-class debut in Worcestershire's second match at that level, against

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English C ...

Hove Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th c ...

in mid-May 1899. He opened the batting with

Wilfrid Foster Major Wilfrid Lionel Foster (2 December 1874 – 22 March 1958) was an English Army officer and a first-class cricketer: a right-handed batsman who played for Worcestershire County Cricket Club in their early years as a first-class team. He was ...

, but was bowled for 4 in each innings, though he did take a catch to dismiss opposing captain

Billy Murdoch William Lloyd Murdoch (18 October 1854 – 18 February 1911) was an Australian cricketer who captained the Australian national side in 16 Test matches between 1880 and 1890. This included four tours of England, one of which, in 1882, gave ri ...

. Four further games that season produced a highest score of just 21. After a near miss with 95 against Sussex a few days earlier, Bowley scored his maiden hundred by hitting 118 against

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire is ...

at the end of May 1900. Although he made no further centuries that summer, he did pass a thousand runs for the season,

averaging In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

just over 24. For several years thereafter he was a significant contributor to Worcestershire's batting, enjoying the most productive season of his career in 1906 when he hit 1,629 first-class runs (1,466 of them for Worcestershire) with two hundreds and 11 fifties. He played rather fewer games in 1907 and 1908, and came nowhere near his thousand runs in either season, but from 1909 until first-class cricket was interrupted by the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighti ...

he achieved the mark every year except 1912. In June 1914 he made his highest score, 276 against Hampshire at

Dudley Dudley is a large market town and administrative centre in the county of West Midlands, England, southeast of Wolverhampton and northwest of Birmingham. Historically an exclave of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the ...

; this established a county record that survived until surpassed by

Glenn Turner Glenn Maitland Turner (born 26 May 1947) played cricket for New Zealand and was one of the country's best and most prolific batsmen. He is the current head of the New Zealand Cricket selection panel. Early life Glenn Turner was born in Dun ...

's 311 * 68 years later. Bowley was well into his forties when county cricket resumed in 1919, but he nevertheless played on for several years and scoring consistently in a weak Worcestershire side. His highest post-war innings was the 188 he hit against

Somerset Somerset ( , ; Archaism, archaically Somersetshire , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in South West England which borders Gloucestershire and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east and Devon to the so ...

in 1921, and that season he passed 1,000 runs for the 14th and last time, falling just short with 974 in 1922. He played one further first-class match, against Hampshire in May 1923, aged 49, but made just 0 and 5 as Worcestershire slipped to a two-day innings defeat. His bowling was of the strictly occasional variety, but he did take four wickets in first-class cricket, his first and last victims (

Albert Relf Albert Edward Relf (26 June 1874 – 26 March 1937) was a professional cricketer who played for Sussex and England. Relf was an all-rounder who batted in the middle order and bowled off-breaks at medium pace with great accuracy. He played Mi ...

in 1900 and Jack Board in 1904) being

Test Test(s), testing, or TEST may refer to: * Test (assessment), an educational assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities Arts and entertainment * ''Test'' (2013 film), an American film * ''Test'' (2014 film), ...

players.

Note

* Cricinfo gives Bowley's career aggregate of catches as 148 rather than 15

References

External links

*
Statistical summary
from CricketArchive {{DEFAULTSORT:Bowley, Frederick 1873 births 1943 deaths Sportspeople from Brecon Welsh cricketers Worcestershire cricketers Players cricketers Players of the South cricketers North v South cricketers Non-international England cricketers