Cricket's Historians

The Cricketer Magazine as a result. By the close of its second year The Cricketer , unsurprisingly in view of its contents, was really struggling to break even. Appeals to readers to buy shares, plus a move into the offices of the Morning Post saved the magazine. Sales however did not improve and a second crisis in 1928 was only averted by dismissing both Frank Sellicks and the advertising manager. A.W.T.Langford was given the dual roles. Arthur WilliamTanfield Langford was born in Ilford in 1896; he followed his father, William, into journalism and after some weekly papers, wrote for the Morning Post and later the Evening Standard . A useful club cricketer he played for Jesters, Hampton Wick, Nomads, Grasshoppers and M.C.C. His major contribution, initially, to The Cricketer was a weekly column on the club cricket scene in the Home Counties. As will be mentioned later he was effectively to run The Cricketer almost single-handed from 1939 to his retirement. Amid these battles to keep the new magazine afloat, the management had one idea which was to become a lasting legacy from the magazine’s first decade, and that was to invite H.S.Altham to write, in weekly parts, the history of cricket. The series began in the edition of May 6, 1922 and concluded in the edition of August 22, 1925. The 91 episodes ended with the 1912 Triangular Tournament. Harry Surtees Altham was born in Camberley, Surrey in 1888 and educated at Repton and Oxford. He was awarded his blue in 1911 and 1912. He played 10 matches for Surrey prior to the war and 24 for Hampshire in the immediate post-war period. He had joined the staff of Winchester College in 1913 and, except for his service in the 60 th Rifles during the war, remained as a Winchester master until 1948. Whilst at Winchester he was an ardent cricket coach and, following his retirement, he more or less founded and then chaired the M.C.C. Youth Cricket Association, still being in post at his death. He held other cricketing posts, most notably Chairman of England Selectors in 1954. Altham’s part-work was reissued, having been revised, as a book A History of Cricket by Allen & Unwin in 1926. It became a standard 101