Cricket's Historians

Roy Webber and the Society of Cricket Statisticians continued as editor until the close, but in the post-war editions there is no acknowledgement for any specific person updating the record section. The other national annual to be revived was the News Chronicle Cricket Annual . This reappeared very little changed, but Frank Thorogood had gone and the editor for 1946 was Percy Rudd. The following year he gave way to Crawford White, the newspaper’s cricket correspondent and soon to become very well-known in cricketing circles. Crawford White was born in Glasgow in 1913, but moved to Lancashire as a journalist on a local paper, combining that job with being a cricket professional in the Lancashire Leagues. He was good enough to play for Lancashire Second Eleven though he declined a post on the playing staff at Old Trafford. Following war service with Bomber Command, he moved to Fleet Street and the News Chronicle . As their cricket correspondent he covered most of the major England Test Matches, home and abroad. He wrote brief accounts of four Ashes series, these being published in conjunction with Roy Webber’s statistics. When the News Chronicle closed, White briefly joined the Daily Mail , before moving to the Daily Express . After retiring from journalism he worked in PR for Cornhill Insurance. An urbane man who seemed to attend every function on his overseas tours, he was ideal for the job. Crawford White died in November 2000. It was for the third post-war summer that The Playfair Books Cricket Annual was launched. In essence it was a kind of cross between the old Red Lillywhite annual and Ayres before the latter was swallowed up with Public Schools data. The Editor was Peter West. Born in Addiscombe in 1920, Peter Anthony West was educated at Cranbrook, where he captained the cricket sides of 1938 and 1939. Invalided out of the Army, he joined Exchange Telegraph as a sports reporter and in 1947 began a second career commentating for B.B.C. Radio. It is most probably here where he first met Roy Webber, in the latter’s capacity as scorer. Webber provided the statistics for the new annual. At a higher price, it was a much glossier affair than the usual newspaper productions of the time. The first edition advertised the Cricket Book Society, as did the second in 1949, when Roy Webber retains the by-line 133