Cricket's Historians

Bowen Bows Out sever his own leg. I received a letter from him dated September 24, 1968, in which he notes: “I came back home yesterday – feeling a trifle weak, but otherwise OK. The papers made a ghastly story out of it and where they got it all from I do not at all know.” He left his family home in Eastbourne and retired toMullion inCornwall, marrying a year or two later. He died suddenly at home in Buckfastleigh, Devon in September 1978. Despite the immense influence Bowen had on cricket historians of his day and indeed succeeding generations of historians, the fact that The Cricketer magazine confined Bowen’s obituary to just 38 words, is indicative of the feathers he had ruffled. Returning to The Cricketer , as has been mentioned its format was drastically altered in November 1962, but this was just the beginning of a major upheaval. According to E.W.Swanton it was apparently on a whim that Noel Holland and R.A.A.Holt of the book publishers, Hutchinson, decided to take over the publication. Richard Anthony Appleby Holt, born in Kensington in 1920, had captained the Harrow side of 1938. He played a few games for Sussex that year and in 1939. After Cambridge and war service he qualified as a solicitor and was appointed Chairman of Hutchinson’s in 1959. The magazine publishers, Mercury House, took over the reins from Hutchinson’s in 1970, but soon discovered that the magazine was not viable and thought the only option was to close it down. Ben Brocklehurst, the former Somerset captain, who was at Mercury House, decided to resign from the company, buy The Cricketer and in effect run it from the back garden of his house in Ashurst, Kent. He was destined to remain the owner of the title until it merged with Wisden Cricket Monthly in October 2003. Benjamin Gilbert Brocklehurst died in June 2007 aged 85. So much for the tale of The Cricketer ’s financial control, but of more importance to the cricket reading public and historians is the editorial staff and the actual content. It has already been noted (when the rival Playfair Cricket Monthly was launched) that E.W.Swanton became the 205