The announcement in
The Times of Cowan's forthcoming marriage in June 1911 indicates that his family was at that stage living at
Stratford-upon-Avon and he therefore qualified to play cricket for Warwickshire by residence; he also played club cricket for Leamington Cricket Club. He played first-class cricket for the first time in a single match in 1909, appeared in five more games in 1910 and then played six times in Warwickshire's unexpected
County Championship-winning season of 1911. Naval duties and war then meant he disappeared from first-class cricket for eight seasons, but he reappeared for Warwickshire in the 1919 season and, although the county had one of its worst-ever seasons, finishing bottom of the County Championship, Cowan had some individual success as a batsman, though his highest innings of the year came in a first-class match for a combined Army and Navy side against a "Demobilised Officers XI", when he made 67 not out. There were further matches for Warwickshire in 1920 and 1921, when he occasionally captained the county side; in the match against
Hampshire in 1920, he made 78 as an opening batsman and this was his highest first-class score, though it was of little avail in the face of a Hampshire first innings of 616 and Warwickshire lost by an innings. Though Cowan did not play first-class cricket after 1921, he resumed his association with Warwickshire on his retirement from the Royal Navy, acting as captain of the second eleven in the
Minor Counties Championship in the early 1930s and in other second eleven matches after Warwickshire had dropped out of the Minor Counties, through to 1936. Outside cricket, he was a
Justice of the Peace and a
Deputy Lieutenant of Warwickshire. ==References==