Cricket's Historians

206 Bowen Bows Out Editorial Director with Irving Rosenwater as the Assistant Editor. The latter resigned in 1967-68 and the new ‘workhorse’ brought in was C.D.A.Martin-Jenkins. Born in January 1945, Christopher Dennis Alexander Martin-Jenkins captained Marlborough in 1963 and then went up to Cambridge, where he failed to get a blue. After three years with The Cricketer , Martin-Jenkins moved to the B.B.C., where he remains as a member of the ‘Test Match Special’ team. He has also reported on cricket for the Daily Telegraph and The Times . Over the course of forty years Martin-Jenkins has been the editor or compiler of numerous cricket books, some of which will feature later. Following the departure of Martin-Jenkins various journalists came and went in rapid succession. T.R.P.Scanlon was Martin-Jenkins’ immediate successor – he lasted less than a year. In January 1971, Alan Ross is described as ‘Acting Editor’, then in March Robin Brooke-Smith becomes ‘Assistant Editor’. By September H.A.Pawson, the former Kent cricketer, was labelled ‘Deputy Editor’. – he was not the sort of person who wanted to run the magazine on a day-to-day basis. Swanton and Brocklehurst needed a keen young enthusiast to do the hard work. Such a person, in search of a post in cricket journalism, had just landed from Australia. David Edward John Frith, born London in March 1937, had written a few articles for The Cricketer in the 1960s and in 1970 had published My Dear Victorious Stod , the biography of A.E.Stoddart of Middlesex and England. The book won the newly designated Cricket Society Literary Award. In November 1972, Frith took over as Deputy Editor, with Pawson confined to ‘Club News’. In less than six months Frith was upgraded to Editor, though Swanton remained as Editorial Director. What Frith did not immediately foresee was that Dickens Press, the owners of the Playfair Cricket Monthly , were keen to be shot of all their magazine titles, including the Playfair . Brocklehurst jumped at the opportunity to swallow The Cricketer ’s only national rival. The two magazines merged in May 1973. Roy Webber had really been the initial powerhouse behind the Playfair and after his death, the magazine, still edited by Gordon Ross, had