Cricket's Historians

Bowen Bows Out Cricketer in 1957 and ran until 1963. It concentrated on club cricket in the Bristol area. In 1960, Burrell launched Who’s Who in the Minor Counties , a typed and duplicated annual which gave brief biographies of many current Minor Counties cricketers. It continued until 1976 when it merged with the ACS Minor Counties Cricket Annual . Another project he founded was ‘Find-a-Pro’ designed to assist local clubs in search of a professional. His letter writing to The Cricketer began in 1957 and continued until 1999. Burrell’s only hardback book Sides & Squares , a history of Clifton C.C., published in 1983, is a typical example of the detailed research which he really enjoyed. Employed by the Bristol Parks Department through his working life, he died in Bristol in September 2001, aged 79. Like Playfair Cricket Monthly , the annual issued under the same banner saw fundamental changes in the period under review. Through the 1950s the two principal English ‘pocket’ cricket annuals were Playfair Cricket Annual and News Chronicle Cricket Annual . In the 1950s the full title of the latter was News Chronicle & Daily Dispatch Cricket Annual , but the Dispatch piece was removed in 1960. As has been noted it was edited by Crawford White and Roy Webber, ran to 192 pages (or thereabouts) and 4'' by 5 ¼'' in size. The Playfair from 1955 was edited by Gordon Ross, with statistics by Roy Webber, had 176 pages and was 5'' by 7''. In 1960 the News Chronicle publication cost 1/6d, the Playfair 6/-. The Playfair was a much superior production with good quality pictures, but the actual factual difference in terms of information given differed very little between the two books. As has previously beenmentioned, the News Chronicle folded in 1960 and for two years Webber edited The Cricket Annual using the News Chronicle format. The Playfair Annual continued for those two years unaltered. However for 1963, the Dickens Press took over the Playfair titles. The large format Playfair Cricket Annual disappeared and the Playfair name was attached to the former News Chronicle Cricket Annual . Gordon Ross, the editor, explains in his Introduction: “Since the two cricket annuals were published for the 1962 season, the Playfair titles have been taken over by 209