Cricket's Historians

210 Bowen Bows Out The Dickens Press, the publishing branch of The Daily News Ltd, which owned the News Chronicle and The Star (the London Evening newspaper) until their closure in 1960.” It will be recalled that Roy Webber had died in November 1962. The only person credited with assisting Ross with the hybrid 1963 annual is Michael Fordham, but it is quite a hunt to discover where his name is mentioned. Whilst these ‘pocket’ cricket annuals were changing and also the cricket magazines, there was no change for Wisden . The editor between 1960 and 1973 was Norman Preston; the compilation of the Record Section did change hands, though not the layout or content, other than updates. Copinger retired in 1963, Leslie Smith acted as ‘updater’ from 1964 to 1969, Irving Rosenwater took over for 1970 and then resigned as a matter of principle. He did not agree that the England v Rest of The World matches (played in lieu of England v South Africa) in 1970 should be considered as Test Matches. Bill Frindall took over for 1971. To many cricket statisticians the job of updating the record section in Wisden was the pinnacle of a statistical career – the first port of call for anyone seeking to confirm a major cricket record was the section in Wisden and had been since Ashley-Cooper conceived the present basic layout prior to the First World War. It is curious that Frindall in his 2006 autobiography does not mention his appointment and indeed Rosenwater’s name is searched for in vain in Frindall’s book, very odd! Leslie Smith, mentioned above, worked for the Cricket Reporting Agency and from 1935 was drafted in to assist in the compilation of Wisden . He retired after the 1969 edition. In the period 1970 to 1972 another attempt was made to publish popular histories of the first-class county clubs. The publishers were Arthur Barker and the books, hardback, between 160 and 200 pages in length, also had a variable picture section on art paper. It cannot be said that any of them contained much original research, the concentration tending to be 20 th century cricket.