Cricket's Historians

The Formation of the Association of Cricket Statisticians by profession and had written a number of books in conjunction with Keith Miller, dealing with various Test series in which Miller took part. Whitington’s History was a jump too far and was described at the time as ‘slipshod’. A broadcaster and journalist who takes more care and worries more about the nitty-gritty of cricketing data is Tony Cozier from the West Indies. Born in Barbados in 1943, he is the son of Edward Lloyd Cozier, who also was a journalist by profession. In 1970 he created The West Indian Cricket Annual . From the age of 20, Cozier junior was a regular West Indian correspondent for The Cricketer and like his father a well- known broadcaster. He published in 1978 The West Indies: Fifty Years of Test Cricket . This gave potted scores of Test Matches on a series by series basis and brief data on all the West Indian Test cricketers. Gordon Ross had published in 1976 A History of West Indies Cricket – a misnomer; the book really dealt with the same ground as Cozier’s. The pre-1928 ‘history’ occupied just nine pages. The idea of books devoted to a single country’s Test cricket seems to have been a fad of the 1970s. A.H.Carman, in 1975, compiled New Zealand International Cricket 1894-1974 which covered much the same ground as Canynge Caple’s The All Blacks at Cricket 1860-1958 . Both used summaries of Reese’s two volume history to cover the early years. In 1975 came two Indian books, Indian Test Cricket 1932-1974 by Vijayan Bala (this appeared in several updated editions, the last in 1979) and From Porbander toWadekar by N.S.Ramaswami which gives a little more space to first-class cricket, but not a great deal. In 1976 came Edward Docker’s History of Indian Cricket . This neglects any deep analysis of the development of the game on the sub-continent and begins with the 1926-27 M.C.C. Tour to India. However Docker had done a considerable amount of research into such matters as the creation of the Indian Board of Control and the background to each Test series is well described. Edward ‘Ted’ Wybergh Docker is the son of the New South Wales cricketer, P.W.Docker (1886- 1978); other members of the family also appeared in first-class cricket. In 1978 Ted Docker wrote a second cricket book Bradman and the Bodyline 225