Cricket's Historians

Bowen Bows Out cruised. Part of the deal in taking over the Playfair title was that Gordon Ross was appointed Executive Editor of the new combined magazine; in addition a new quarterly magazine was launched titled The Cricketer Quarterly , which featured the detailed overseas first-class match scores that had always appeared in the Playfair magazine. Sub-titled ‘Facts and Figures’, the new Quarterly in no way resembled Bowen’s creation. In page size it was the same as the county annuals of the 1960s and ran to 80 pages. Gordon Ross was the editor and the statistical team was led by Michael Fordham. The first edition contained articles by such diverse figures as Neville Cardus, Irving Rosenwater interviewing E.W.Swanton, Ian Peebles and Mike Denness. Exactly half the magazine’s pages had full scorecards or averages; in addition the first-class County scores and Currie Cup scores were potted. The fourth edition had a Who’s Who of current county players by Michael Fordham, though Bill Frindall ran a ‘Meet The Newcomers’ piece in the three earlier editions. Bill Frindall was the B.B.C. radio scorer, who had taken that job when Arthur Wrigley died unexpectedly in 1965. Born in Epsom, Surrey in March 1939, William Howard Frindall was educated at Reigate Grammar School and after briefly studying architecture joined the R.A.F. He left the service, by chance, just before the scoring vacancy appeared. He was to continue as B.B.C. scorer until his death in February 2009. His first article in The Journal of The Cricket Society appeared in November 1967; his first in The Cricketer in 1968. In 1970 he provided the Sunday League statistics for Playfair Monthly and in the same year his book The Kaye Book of Cricket Records was issued. This was in effect an update of Roy Webber’s Record Book (this had been re-set and updated in 1961). Frindall would also update Webber’s book containing all the Test match scorecards, but his most innovative publication was ‘Frindall’s Score Book’, which reproduced his ‘vertical’ scoring system in book form for Test Matches, commencing with the 1975 England v Australia series. The previous Test scorer to use this format had been Bill Ferguson, who acted as scorer and baggage man for many Test touring sides, beginning with the 1905 Australians. He went on no less than 42 tours, ending in 1953-54. 207