Cricket's Historians

The Formation of the Association of Cricket Statisticians of the problems of debatable first-class status in English matches and, in comparison with many counties Warwickshire had comparatively few players involved in overseas first-class cricket. Due to expense these county booklets contained only very basic biographical notes, though the players’ career records were given both for the individual county and in all first- class cricket. Statistics in limited overs matches (already the most popular form of the game among spectators) were not shown, but the handful of players who had appeared for the county in only limited overs matches were listed separately. Matters however did not run as smoothly as was anticipated. Leslie Duckworth, a local journalist, had been commissioned by the county club to write a comprehensive history of Warwickshire C.C.C. Duckworth, born in Bradford in 1904, had been until retirement in 1970 the News Editor of the Birmingham Post ; he was awarded the M.B.E. for his services to journalism. Writing this Warwickshire history was his retirement job. A personal friend of the Warwickshire Secretary, Leslie Deakins, he had followed Warwickshire since the 1920s. He was relying on the two semi-official County Club statisticians, Ted Hampton and Philip Pike (the Warwickshire First Eleven scorer) for the statistical ‘facts’ for the book. Hampton and Pike had done little or no historical research into Warwickshire. They accepted the statistics handed down by their predecessors and merely updated them. Bowen had discovered the so-called facts ‘handed down’ were too often faulty. As Duckworth, aided by Hampton and Pike, prepared his manuscript, Brooke, inspired by Bowen’s call for original sources to be researched, was correcting long established ‘facts’. He then began to bombard Duckworth with his ‘discoveries’. Duckworth was in a no win situation. He chose to stay with the data as handed down, so the official Warwickshire history differed from the first County book published by the ACS, causing quite a furore at the time. It was clear to the committee of the Association that established statisticians would not be persuaded overnight that the entire body of published ‘first-class’ statistics needed re-checking, where possible from original scorebooks or contemporary newspapers, and as result altering in many cases. 219