Cricket's Historians

The Booming Market for Cricket Books and a former schoolmaster. To follow the Melbourne book came Treasures of Lord’s by Tim Rice, the well-known composer, published by Collins in 1989. There are quite a number of unfamiliar coloured illustrations. If books on memorabilia were proving popular, then the same could be said of the statistical works issued by the ACS. Despite the existence of Wisden , the Playfair Annual and the B&H Cricket Year , no annual publication provided up-to-date career data for all the world’s first- class cricketers. In 1985, the Limited Overs Statistical Group decided to merge with the ACS with the proviso that the ACS dropped its long standing attitude to ‘One Day’ statistics. The result was the inclusion in an annual containing all current first-class cricketers of their records in One Day matches as well as their first-class data. The ACS International Cricket Yearbook was first published in 1986 in conjunction with Hamlyns. The joint compilers were Philip Bailey, John Stockwell and Peter Wynne- Thomas. After two years Hamlyns decided the work was not a commercial proposition and from 1988, the ACS published the annual under its own imprint. In 1989 Philip Bailey became the sole compiler. The first issue contained 224 pages, but such has been the growth in top-class cricket that the 2010 edition had grown to 420 pages, though this does include nine pages detailing the careers of the leading women cricketers. The year before this annual was launched the ACS first published a book containing the biographical details of cricketers who appeared in the First-Class Counties Second Eleven competition in the previous season – in effect it was a brother of the Minor Counties Annual issued by the ACS. The idea had been proposed by the Derbyshire statistician, Frank Peach; John Featherstone, who had been elected on to the ACS Committee in 1982, was appointed as compiler and editor. In 1985 he also took on the role of ACS Marketing Manager. Although born in Lincolnshire, Featherstone spent most of his life in Yorkshire and was employed by the Leeds City Council. A keen supporter of Yorkshire he was editor of Yorkshire’s official magazine, White Rose . For five years he acted as Secretary to the Women’s Cricket Association. He died in Dover, 251