Cricket's Historians

220 The Formation of the Association of Cricket Statisticians Duckworth died in Codsall, Staffordshire in July 1983; Ted Hampton, a good club wicketkeeper, died in Birmingham in 1980 aged 78. He had been supplying statistics to the County Club for insertion in the Annual Report for more than 30 years. The principal organ of the new ACS, The Cricket Statistician was a much more lively publication than the more staid Journal of the Cricket Society and it quickly attracted contributors. Gordon Tratalos was appointed Brooke’s Assistant Editor from Issue 15 and he contributed a regular column ‘Records At Random’ which featured a wide variety of topics. Tratalos, who suffered health problems throughout his life, died following a stroke in March 1985 aged 52. The magazine seemed to open the floodgates for both historians and statisticians. After only twenty issues it had attracted nearly a hundred contributors – to give a sense of scale, the 156 issues of Playfair Cricket Monthly attracted about 250 correspondents in total and The Journal of The Cricket Society seemed to have the same 20 or so writers over 20 years. Brooke published a potpourri of information from all over the world and compiled numerous articles and short pieces himself. His personality shines through every issue. The trenchant book reviews, for which he later became notorious, did not appear in earnest for several years. Brooke wrote personally to every new member of the ACS and almost shamed them into sending some article in for publication. Many of the contributors to The Cricket Statistician have previously been mentioned – RowlandBowen, Jack Burrell, John Ferguson, Leslie Fielding, John Goulstone, John Griffiths, Henry Holmes, John Marder, J.S.Milner, Leslie Newnham, Frank Peach, Irving Rosenwater, A.H.Wagg and Ernest Gross (he sent material on minor cricket for almost every edition and had resigned as Statistical Officer of The Cricket Society, since the act of forming the ACS had demonstrated how poorly the Society had treated statisticians in recent times). One contributor to The Cricket Quarterly and founder member of the ACS, not mentioned so far in any detail, is Philip Thorn, who was born in