From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishbowlerbowl‧er /ˈbəʊlə $ ˈboʊlər/ noun [countable] 1 
DSCa player in cricket who throws the ball at a batsman2 DC (also bowler hat British English) a hard round black hat that businessmen sometimes wear SYN derby American English
DSCa player in cricket who throws the ball at a batsman2 DC (also bowler hat British English) a hard round black hat that businessmen sometimes wear SYN derby American EnglishExamples from the Corpus
bowler• As a bowler at Middlesex, Tuffers has a great tradition to live up to.• Three needed to take the lead: young fast bowler Royden Hayes, till then victimless, skittled Priest.• Can it really be only 18 months ago that the Surrey opening bowler was dispatching Martin Crowe in successive one-day internationals?• Brown would be the brave choice; he's now reckoned to be the more penetrating bowler.• I must confess that I would prefer to see a pigtail with an earring rather than the traditional civil service bowler hat.• In any case, let's adjust the mundane balance of recent decades and start with the slow bowlers.• Yet the bowlers defended well, and only Richardson mastered them so that the closing overs were tense. 