Despite his clear cricketing skills, Lowry struggled to establish himself in what was then an excellent first-class side in his first two years at Cambridge, and did not earn his Blue. He did, however, play some games for Somerset, although his qualification to do so was obscure. The story is told that his birthplace was said to be Wellington, without mentioning that it was not the Somerset market town but the city in New Zealand; in fact, this was how Somerset had skirted the regulations for Peter Randall Johnson before World War I.