Background
Lowson was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England.
Lowson was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England.
In first-class cricket, Lowson amassed 15,321 runs at an average of over 37, but had drifted away from the county game by his early thirties. A right-handed opening batsman from the Bradford League, Lowson came late to first-class cricket and then was an instant success as an opening batsman for Yorkshire, scoring 1,799 runs in his first season, 1949, and partnering Len Hutton in the most prolific season of Hutton"s career. The following year, 1950, Lowson was even better, scoring 2,152 runs and during the first half of the 1950s he continued a hugely productive partnership with Hutton, often being described as a Hutton clone.
The partnership moved into Test cricket against the South Africans in 1951.
Lowson was then chosen for a gruellingly-long five-month Master Control Console tour of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1951-1952, from which he emerged with mixed reviews. Many of the leading England players of the time opted out of this tour, Hutton included.
Lowson played in four of the five Tests against India, and made his highest Test score (68) in the first match. He scored more than 1,000 first-class runs on the tour, at an average of 44 runs per innings, but could average only 18 in the Tests.
His skill could not be denied and he seemed an England batsman all over, the only doubt being the question of temperament".
In county cricket, he did well in 1952, better in 1953 when he made his highest score, an unbeaten 259 against Worcestershire at New Road, and then performed well again in 1954. But Hutton"s retirement in 1955 coincided with Lowson"s worst season and though he returned to form in 1956, he was injured for part of 1957 and wholly out of form in 1958. At the end of the 1958 season, Yorkshire having endured the least successful period in its history in terms of lack of County Championship success, the Yorkshire committee and new captain Ronnie Burnet decided to go for a policy of youth and dispensed with the services of several senior players, including Johnny Wardle, Bob Appleyard and Lowson.
He went on to build a career in insurance.
J. M. Kilburn, the former cricket correspondent of the Yorkshire Post, summed up Lowson"s career when he wrote: "He had all the attributes of a Test cricketer except, perhaps, the driving force of ambition". Lowson died in Pool-in-Wharfedale, Yorkshire, in September 1984, at the age of 59.
Lowson"s family is still involved in the game.
Quotations: "He had all the attributes of a Test cricketer except, perhaps, the driving force of ambition".