Wisden overview
Tall, raw-boned and bespectacled, Bill Bowes was a bowler of great ability with the new ball, having control of swing either way, although not quite as fast as some of his contemporaries. He could make the ball kick and would bowl a few bumpers to test out a batsman's nerve and technique. Sometimes (in the early 1930s) he bowled leg-theory to a packed leg-field and was involved in his share of controversy, but he spearheaded Yorkshire's attack during years of great Championship success. He took just one wicket on the 1932-33 Bodyline tour, but it was the big one – Bradman at Melbourne, playing on to his first ball. But for the next six years, he was an integral part of the attack. Bowes had an air of remoteness on the field, but underneath lay an educated, intelligent and mathematical mind. His fielding was moderate and his batting such that he took more wickets than scored runs. During the war, in which he reached commissioned rank, he was a POW and returned, not in full health, for two seasons. He later became a respected cricket journalist on Yorkshire newspapers. Christopher Martin-Jenkins

Adapted by Wisden from World Cricketers: A Biographical Dictionary (Oxford, 1996).

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