Cricket's Historians

A Spate of County Histories born in September 1959 in Gloucester, but moved to Cardiff aged 18 months. Educated at Llanishen Grammar School and Exeter University, he was a master at Blundell’s for six years before moving to Wells Cathedral School. In 2004 he left school-mastering to take up the post as archivist and First Eleven scorer at Glamorgan. Apart from his books, many of which will be mentioned later, he has contributed regular articles to the leading cricket journals. In 2005 he took over as Editor of both the Glamorgan C.C.C. Yearbook and The Journal of The Cricket Society (from Clive Porter). He is also the current Secretary of the ACS. His researches into early Glamorgan and South Wales cricket are to be commended as a model for other county historians. In the 1970s and 80s the principal statistician for Glamorgan had been Wayne Thomas. Educated at Cardiff High School and University College, Cardiff, he was a lecturer and though he moved to Surrey through his work, he remained interested in both Glamorgan cricket and Welsh rugby; he had compiled Glamorgan C.C.C. Book of Cricket Records 1921-1976 and A Century of Welsh Rugby Players in 1980. The second batch of Helm histories was issued in 1989 – Yorkshire by Tony Woodhouse, Worcestershire by David Lemmon, Surrey also by David Lemmon, Lancashire by Peter Wynne-Thomas and Derbyshire by John Shawcroft. The last-named had previously written a Derbyshire history in 1970 (see Chapter 14). Anthony ‘Tony’ Woodhouse was born in Chapel Allerton in 1931. He worked in the family advertising business of Woodhouse & Sons Ltd of Leeds, but as a dedicated supporter of Yorkshire County Cricket spent much of his time following that county’s fortunes. From 1957 to 1992 (when he suffered a serious road accident) he did not miss a single home Yorkshire match. In 1978 he was elected to the Yorkshire C.C.C. Committee and served until his accident. For more than thirty years he sent reports on the Yorkshire leagues to The Cricketer . He vied with Geoffrey Copinger as to which of them possessed the finest cricket library – his contained more than 12,000 titles. He was chairman of the ACS from 1981 to 1993. He died in Leeds in January 2003. In 1990 and 1991, Helm published just one title a year – Gloucestershire 263