Jack Cowie

Cowie was a first-class umpire from 1955–56 to 1960–61. He officiated in one Test match in the 1955–56 season, and two in 1958–59.

Towards the end of the tour, there was one more five-wicket innings for Cowie in the match against Middlesex. That proved to be his last significant bowling achievement in first-class cricket. He moved in his job in insurance to Wellington on his return from England and he appeared in the 1949-50 New Zealand domestic season in just one match for Auckland against a non-Test-playing Australian side, and then retired.

Limited domestic matches in the 1947–48 and 1948–49 seasons produced further wickets for Cowie though at a higher cost than usual. But he was an automatic selection for his second tour of England, with the 1949 team led by Walter Hadlee.

The following season, 1946–47, there was a further single Test match in New Zealand: the visitors on this occasion were the England team which had toured Australia, losing The Ashes series. In a rain-shortened match, New Zealand held their own and Cowie was prominent with both ball and, unusually, bat. In New Zealand's only innings, he made 45, his highest Test score, adding 64 for the ninth wicket with Tom Burtt. Then, starting with Cyril Washbrook in the first over, he took six of the seven England wickets to fall at a cost of 83 runs.

When regular first-class cricket resumed in New Zealand in 1945–46, the Australians sent a fairly strong team (though lacking Don Bradman) to play five first-class matches, and the match against New Zealand was recognised as a Test match. It was a low-scoring game, won easily by Australia inside two days. The New Zealanders made only 42 in their first innings and 54 in the second; in between, Australia made 199 for eight wickets before declaring, and Cowie took six of the eight wickets that fell at a personal cost of 40 runs. These were the best Test bowling figures of his career.

Thereafter Cowie's cricket was confined to New Zealand for the next 12 years through a combination of the Second World War and an extremely limited Test schedule. He continued to be a regular wicket-taker in the three domestic seasons before first-class cricket was suspended in New Zealand in 1940, but New Zealand played no Test matches in this period.

This form won him a place in the 1937 New Zealand team to tour England under the captaincy of Curly Page.

Cowie was, in the words of Wisden's report, "the outstanding player of the team" on the 1937 tour. Having taken previously only 45 first-class wickets, he took 114 in England and Ireland, at an average of 19.95, heading the touring team's bowling figures for both average and aggregate. Wisden said that not only was he "a first-rate fast-medium bowler, but a bowler equal to anyone of his type in present-day cricket." It went on: "Some of Cowie's colleagues who had played with or against him in New Zealand were surprised at the pace off the pitch which he obtained on English wickets. A player with an enormous capacity for work, who seemed impervious to fatigue and was accurate in length and direction, he often bowled a vicious off-break and, as he could also make the ball 'lift' and swing away, he was a bowler to be feared."

The New Zealand team played three matches in Australia on the way home after the 1937 tour of England. In the match against South Australia, Cowie had Don Bradman caught behind at the start of the second day's play; when people queuing outside the ground heard that Bradman was out, many decided not to attend the match, which severely damaged the gate takings. In the match against New South Wales, Cowie bowled Stan McCabe twice cheaply.

As in 1937, Cowie was one of the key players on the 1949 tour of England, though age – he was 37 – and a warm and dry summer did not help his figures. Wisden said that they did him "far less than justice". It went on: "For a bowler of his pace his consistency was remarkable... Another 25 or 30 wickets for the same number of runs would have given him an analysis more in keeping with his value."

Cowie maintained his good form through the remaining first-class matches of the tour. He took eight wickets in the match, including five for 36 in the second innings, against Combined Services; then five in the game with Hampshire and seven in both the Kent and Sussex matches. There were seven further wickets in the Folkestone festival match against "An England XI", the first of which was Cowie's 100th wicket of the season. And in the final game in England, against H. D. G. Leveson Gower's XI at Scarborough, he made 36 out of a ninth wicket stand of 74 with Tom Lowry, the highest score of his career so far.

Cowie married Nyrie Wallen in 1936; they had two daughters. He worked for the T & G Mutual Life Assurance Society, an Australian and New Zealand insurance group, for 47 years, serving as an executive from 1967 to 1974.

A lower-order right-handed batsman and a fast-medium right-handed bowler, Cowie played first-class cricket for Auckland from the 1932–33 season, appearing regularly in Plunket Shield matches from 1934–1935. According to his obituary in Wisden in 1995, he started as a batsman but converted himself into a bowler because the Auckland side had too many batsmen for him to be guaranteed a place. As a bowler, he relied on accuracy and the ability to move the ball after it pitched, and Wisden likened him to a latter-day New Zealand bowler, Richard Hadlee. But his success in domestic cricket was limited until the 1936–37 season, when he took 21 wickets in four first-class matches, and in the match against Wellington at Auckland took five wickets in an innings for the first time, finishing with five for 81.

He played soccer in the winter from the 1930s, acting as goalkeeper for Auckland for 14 seasons. He later served on the New Zealand Football Association as treasurer, chairman, and delegate to FIFA. From 1972 to 1978 he was president of the Oceania Football Confederation. In the 1972 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for valuable services to cricket.

John Cowie OBE (30 March 1912 – 3 June 1994) was a New Zealand cricketer who played in nine Tests from 1937 to 1949. His Test opportunities were restricted by New Zealand's limited programme, and his cricket career was interrupted by World War II from 1939 to 1945. Following the 1937 tour of England, Wisden commented: "Had he been an Australian, he might have been termed a wonder of the age."