Cricket's Historians

The World of Cricket The third major figure in the compilation of the book was Tony Winlaw. Antony Sebastian Roger deWintonWinlawwas born inHarrow, Middlesex in March 1938, and educated at Harrow, where he was in the XI in 1955 and 1956. Like both Swanton and Melford, he was a sports journalist with the Daily Telegraph and The Cricketer . His value as a checker of historical facts was on a par with Melford. How far Rosenwater could alter the copy sent in by the ‘experts’ is not known. In later years he might well have declined to assist in such a flawed project. Rosenwater was, ten years later, to upbraid the Association of Cricket Statisticians for rushing their publications into print! When the second edition appeared in 1980 Rosenwater was no longer the Assistant Editor. During the 1960s, Rosenwater published four other works which show him in an entirely different light. Three are slim volumes of meticulous scholarship – F.S.Ashley-Cooper (1964); The Story of a Cricket Playbill (1968), and J.N.Pentelow (1969). Each demonstrates the depth to which the author went to get his facts right as well as the care with which he assembled the facts His major work of the 1960s was England v Australia: A compendium of Test Cricket betweeen the Countries 1877-1968 . His co- author was Ralph Barker. Barker had a rather unorthodox career; his working life began in journalism in 1934, drafted in the RAF during the Second World War, he was not demobbed in 1945, but continued to serve until 1961. He then set himself up as a free-lance writer. He was the author of several books on flying, including The Schneider Trophy Races and a biography of F.Spencer Chapman. In 1964 his first cricket book appeared, Ten Geat Innings . This was well received; Bowen comments: “We understand that this is the author’s first book on cricket though he has written several others on widely different topics. We hope it may be the first of many for the author shows clearly he has the stuff of cricket in him, and he can write.” John Arlott is equally laudatory when Barker’s second cricket book, Ten Great Bowlers was published in 1967: “These are satisfying biographies, obviously the result 185