Testing times but Lou played a straight bat

Lou Rowan has been remembered for both his Test cricket umpiring career and his time as a police detective, along with many years as a resident of Yangan.

By Jeremy Sollars

Yangan identity and former Test cricket umpire Lou Rowan will be farewelled on Friday 10 February with a Latin Requiem Mass to be held at Warwick’s St Mary’s Catholic Church at 12.30pm.
Lou Rowan passed away peacefully on Friday 3 February at Warwick Hospital aged 91, his family said in a statement this week.
“Lou Rowan’s umpiring career spanned 26 international Test matches and also the inaugural One Day International game,” the family statement said.
“Between 1963 and 1972 he witnessed some of the game’s great leaders, great players and great characters.
“With Col Egar, Lou Rowan formed one of the most successful umpiring combinations known to cricket.
“They umpired 19 Tests together.
“He umpired the controversial 1970-71 Test match between Australia and England where the English captain Ray Illingworth led his team to ‘walk off’.
“Lou was a founding member of the Queensland Umpire’s Association and for 22 years he was a board member of the Brisbane Cricket Ground Trust.”
His family described Lou as “a highly respected and principled police officer, renowned for conducting himself with unswerving honesty and integrity beginning his service in 1948”.
“He served the Queensland Police Force for 32 years,” they said.
“During that time Lou worked statewide in regional and city areas.
“He also worked on transfer with the New South Wales and Victoria Police. He retired with the rank of Police Inspector on 3 August 1980.
“Lou was born in Murwillumbah, New South Wales, in 1925.
“He married Isabella Zackrisen in 1954 at St Mary’s Catholic Church in Warwick and had a family of eight children.
“Lou passed away at the age of 91 and is survived by his eight children – Janelle, Margaret, Annette, Peter, Stephen, Bernadette and Philip, 21 grandchildren, 10 great grandchildren, his beloved sisters Win and Noreen and his brother Reg.”
Following the Latin Requiem Mass at St Mary’s Lou Rown will be laid to rest at the Yangan Cemetery.
His family has said that all who knew and loved Lou are invited to attend the Mass and burial.