Cricket's Historians

Mainly County Histories and Overseas Annuals covering the 1951-52 season. The editor was Geoffrey Arthur Chettle, who had been born in Christiana, Transvaal in 1907. He left school to join the Merchant Navy and later developed a marine engineering business in Durban. In the 1920s he spent some time in England and was reputed to have had football trials with Manchester United and Doncaster Rovers. After the Second World War cricket reporting was only his spare time hobby – he was said to have required just four hours’ sleep a night. From 1953 Chettle was South African correspondent to The Cricketer for several years, then from 1960 performed the same task for Wisden until his death. N.S.Curnow provided the Record Section for the South African Annual in the 1950s – he was also the Wisden correspondent but in about 1958 he lost interest in cricket and turned his attention to English literature. Under the editorship of Chettle the annual was not renowned for its accuracy, Chettle not being an enthusiastic proof-reader. Aside from the annual, he was the compiler of many cricketing brochures relating to cricket tours and Test series. He died in May 1976. A third national annual founded around this time was The Cricket Almanack of New Zealand . Its first issue came out in 1948, covering the 1947-48 New Zealand season. The editors were Arthur H.Carman and Noel S.Macdonald. Published in Wellington it was undoubtedly the best of the three. From its initial edition, the New Zealand annual gave detailed scores, not only of first-class matches but also what they ranked as ‘Second Class’ with fall of wickets attached to each scorecard ( Wisden did not add this detail until later). There were good biographies of the first- class players and, for this edition, very full coverage of the Fiji tour. The record section begins with a detailed list of what the editors regarded as qualifying as first-class matches in New Zealand. Prior to the Almanack’s appearance the New Zealand Cricket Council had published the bare scores of matches played under their jurisdiction. Macdonald retired from the joint editorship in 1957, but Carman continued until his death inNovember 1982. Born in 1902, Carman trained as a journalist, working on the Wellington Evening Post and specialised in reporting rugby. In 1924 he came over to England in that capacity with 151