Cricket's Historians

More County Histories and The Cricket Society grows job. He was capable of evaluating the diverse material which members submitted for publication, a lot of it was of a poor quality, but he keenly encouraged the more timid souls who produced pieces that were worthy of the magazine. At the same time his own contributions were always of a high standard. He also in the Society’s early days made a start on one of the founder’s principal ambitions, a bibliography of cricket, though John Everitt was the first member to be officially put in charge of the project. In 1983 his biography of Lord Harris was published. It was a trifle disappointing and lacked the depth of this complex character (see later comments on Guha’s book on Indian cricket, for example). Coldham was responsible for the research which went into the Complete Who’s Who of Test Cricketers , published under Martin-Jenkins’ name in 1980. From 1981 to his death, which occurred in Tooting, South London, in January 1987, Coldham was responsible for many of the items in the obituary section of The Cricketer and he also contributed to the Wisden Almanack . Jim Coldham is linked historically with Geoffrey Copinger and a paragraph on the latter would seem to be appropriate at this point and indeed on The Society of Cricket Statisticians. This Society was left, in Chapter 9, recovering from its law-suit against Roy Webber. Copinger took over as the Society’s Chairman in 1947 and by the time he retired, six years later, the Society was beginning to grow from its nucleus of 200 or so members. The name was changed in 1950 from The Society of Cricket Statisticians to The Cricket Society in order to broaden its appeal. Copinger is thanked for his assistance with the compilation of the complete player by player first-class averages which were published in the Society’s first Yearbook covering the 1946 season. He worked in his spare time for the Cricket Reporting Agency compiling the averages which appeared in many newspapers on a weekly basis during the English season. The Society also launched a Newsletter, edited by Ayton Whitaker, who, in 1947, was the Society’s vice-chairman. Geoffrey Arthur Copinger was born at Buxhall, near Stowmarket in December 1910. Educated at Haberdashers Aske’s, Hampstead, he left school for a career in banking. In 1947 he was appointed as editor of the 163