Cricket's Historians

240 A Rival for The Cricketer to 1977-78 compiled by Bill Frindall. This book of Test cricket was the first to include all Tests since Arthur Wrigley’s work in 1965. Frindall, like Wrigley, but unlike Webber, did not include match descriptions. The one new feature was second innings batting orders, but close of play scores were not included. The record sections of both books are similar. There are quite a number of corrections to scorecards, largely due to the researches of Geoffrey Saulez, the Sussex and England scorer. Born in Farnham, Surrey in 1916, Geoffrey Gordon Alfred Saulez was a qualified accountant, who took early retirement to devote himself to cricket statistics. He worked as a scorer for the B.B.C. and as a result went on several tours with the England team. He also scored for Sussex from 1977 to 1981 and for Surrey in 1989. Unlike the general run of statisticians, Saulez was an accomplished cricketer and during the war played in a number of good class matches in India; back in England he was a prominent member of Camberley C.C. Over the years he built up a season-by-season record for all first-class cricketers and he submitted occasional articles to various cricket magazines. He was a member of both The Cricket Society and the ACS. Saulez died in December 2004. Queen Anne Press under its ‘Wisden Cricket Library’ published two major reference works in 1981. Frindall was the compiler of the Wisden Book of Cricket Records . His was an update of his own 1968 Kaye Book of Cricket Records , but with Robert Brooke as his principal adviser. As a result there were many additions and corrections to the previous volume (famously an extra 311 ‘centuries before lunch’) Frindall largely followed the ACS Guides to First-Class cricket; the British Isles, Australia and New Zealand Guides had now been published, but the more difficult subject of Indian first-class matches had yet to be tackled. However Frindall made the silly mistake of stating that only eleven-a-side matches could be first- class and then failing to follow this edict through, especially in the case of players’ career records. A.H.Wagg is credited with advising on the Indian problem, but there is no mention of the 1930-31 Vizianagram matches, which Wagg, as has been noted earlier, had researched. The second ‘Wisden Cricket Library’ reference volume was much