Cricket's Historians

The Formation of the Association of Cricket Statisticians linking the ACS Minor Counties publication to the M.C.C.A. Annual. Kenneth Scott Charles Trushell was born in Grimsby in 1926 and resided in that part of Lincolnshire all his life, being employed in the Courtaulds factory there. He had joined The Cricket Society in 1956 and soon afterwards became the de facto statistician for Lincolnshire. He had joined the ACS in its first year and from 1974 contributed articles to The Cricket Statistician . Developing out of his interest in his own county’s cricketers, he created his own Who’s Who of all cricketers to appear in the Minor Counties Competition. He was editor of the Lincolnshire C.C.C. Yearbook from 1980 and in 1993 was largely responsible for the ACS book , Lincolnshire Cricketers He also was heavily involved in the ACS Guide to First-Class Matches in Pakistan . A methodical researcher, Trushell had been a very useful cricketer at club level and later was noted both as a ballroom dancer and table tennis player; he always looked on the sunny side of life. He died in Grimsby in April 2001. In 1990 a rival Minor Counties yearbook – The 1990 Guide to Minor County Cricket – appeared edited by Mike Berry. A full time journalist, Berry was born in Leamington Spa, but was based in Northampton – he had been a semi-professional footballer and had written for The Times for six years before moving to the Daily Telegraph . In the winter he reported on Northampton Town FC. This new annual printed the detailed scores of all Minor County matches, but only survived for two issues. In 1996 Mike Berry, now the Publicity Officer for the M.C.C.A., was appointed editor of the Minor Counties Annual, though it was still produced by the ACS with Ken Trushall and Rob Brooke as the main contributors. This marriage proved unsatisfactory and the 1997 issue was the sole production of the M.C.C.A., with Berry as Editor. He left the post in 2001 and Philip August took over the compilation. In April 1977, Robert Brooke and Peter Wynne-Thomas launched Cricket News : a weekly review of the game. The magazine aimed to publish full scores of all first-class and county limited overs matches, as well as Minor County matches and County Second Eleven matches, plus weekly comments on the major leagues. There were monthly issues during the 229