A stockbroker and merchant banker too intelligent and ambitious to linger long in a game offering such modest financial rewards, Bob Cowper renounced Test cricket at 28, though not before he had built an impressive portfolio of achievement as a left-hand batsman and finger-spinner. His 12-hour 307 against England at Melbourne in February 1966 was the highest Test innings and the only triple-century on Australian soil until Matthew Hayden's 380 in 2003-04. His fertile cricket imagination and sense of injustice at the lot of the average Australian cricketer left a strong impression on Ian Chappell, in time a militant campaigner for the rights of his comrades.
Gideon Haigh