Cricket's Historians

110 The Cricketer Magazine Cricket Annual , whose editor was Frank Thorogood – his reign lasted until 1939, though the annual’s title changed due to the merger of the News and the Chronicle newspapers. A charming man, whose writings echoed his general demeanour, he was the Daily News , then its successor, the News Chronicle , cricket correspondent until the Second World War. Thorogood died in Carshalton, Surrey in 1950, aged 78. Looking at the 1934 annual, the Record Section was a mere six pages dealing with first-class data and, since it previewed an Australian tour, an additional four pages of England v Australia Test Records – no author or compiler was given. The main content of the book was the pen portraits of county players. These were sometimes quite detailed; Walter Hammond’s for instance was 500 words in length; in contrast to the very brief, purely statistical based pen pictures in today’s Playfair annual, which is a direct descendent of the News Chronicle one. Several other newspapers launched cricket annuals, but they were short-lived. The inter-war overseas market in cricket publications saw two major reference works issued. Luckin published his second volume on South Africa covering the years 1919 to 1927. In New Zealand Reese published New Zealand Cricket 1841 to 1914 in 1927. It had been intended that the book would be printed in 1915, but the outbreak of war caused the long delay. The work is as comprehensive as Luckin’s Volume One. As well as essays on the early development of cricket in the various provinces and the first-class match scores, there are detailed scores of many lesser games. Thomas Wilson Reese was born in Christchurch in 1867 and from 1887-88 to 1917-18 played representative cricket for Canterbury. He was considered one of the outstanding fielders of his day. Two of his brothers also represented Canterbury, one of whom, Daniel, wrote an interested autobiography which was published in 1948. T.W.Reese died in Christchurch in 1949. He issued a second volume of New Zealand cricket history in 1936. This covers the seasons 1914 to 1933. In Australia, there was still no national volume of history, but in 1930 at his own expense, Charles Bernard O’Reilly, a local Adelaide journalist, published South Australian Cricket 1880-1930 . This gave the detailedmatch