Cricket's Historians

276 Biographies Multiply Percival was, like Ken Trushell before him, very much involved in the county cricket of his chosen shire – at the time of writing he is the Hon Secretary of the County Club – and this made research easier than it might have been. Anthony Barry Percival was born in Stretford, Manchester in August 1937 and educated at Sale Grammar School; he is a retired bank manager. In carrying out his biographical research he worked very much in conjunction with Philip Thorn, but Percival widened his horizons beyond Cheshire and in 2003 compiled a similar book on neighbouring Staffordshire. With the death of Philip Thorn, he has continued to research biographies of Minor County players from other counties. The person who set himself the task of researching and trying to compile complete scorecards for every Minor County Championship match is Tony Webb. The job is a long, tedious affair involving the checking of literally hundreds of provincial newspapers, since in many cases no county scorebooks, other than for recent years, are extant. The ACS began the publication of these match scores, on a season-by-season basis in 2004, with 1895. The detail far exceeds the information for the first-class scores as published by the ACS and indeed now reproduced on internet web sites. A flavour of the work undertaken by Webb can been gleaned from a note quoting his sources for a particular game, in this case Oxfordshire v Bucks in 1895: ‘Abingdon Herald 20 July; Jackson’s Oxford Journal 20 July; Oxford Chronicle 20 July; Oxford Times 20 July; Bucks Advertiser 20 July; Bucks Herald 20 July; South Bucks Free Press 19 July; The Cricket Field 27 July; Sporting Life 18-19 July; The Sportsman 17,18,19 July.’ Tony Webb was born in South Croydon in January 1943 and educated at Seaford College and Dublin University. Prior to retirement he was Director of Education and Training for the Confederation of British Industry. Activity among the Minor Counties was not confined to Tony Webb, Tony Percival and their immediate band. Cambridgeshire, that county once briefly first-class, had been on the ACS stocks for thirty years.