Twenty-One Years of the ACS

Lambert's researches in Leicestershire were confined to career records. Thorn had amassed a great deal of biographical information, but spread over all the counties. Brooke had spent a long time compiling career records of all English ericketers and, more vitally, had been researching biographical details of Warwickshire players. Luck was on the committee's side. Warwickshire was notfirst-class until 1894,therefore the statistical nightmare ofstatus of matches through most ofthe 19th century hardly touched Warwickshire players. Brooke volunteered to accept the challenge and produce a worthwhile manuscript from his notes, plus a further two or three months research. One thing to type out a manuscript,another to have it printed within a tight budget. Lambert waved his four fellow enthusiasts off. Brooke began turning Warwickshire upside down for the players he still had not found. Wynne-Thomas went off to Derby and, specifically,a minute printing firm situated in a disused stable in the very centre of that town. Here he found Michael Tranter, surrounded by fonts of type, an aneient press or two and the aroma of printing ink. Another pieee of luek. — many'other teehnicali'ties which p ssed Wynne-Thomas by. A clean- Michael Tranter shaven man in his mid-twenties with a large grin. Tranter worked out how many words there were to a line of 8-point, how many columns of figures would fit into a line of6-point, what was the most economical page size and the size of margins. This governed precisely what Brooke typed out on his manuscript,given the numberof players involved.Could the Association afford to include the pre-first-class Warwickshire players? These, Brooke calculated, would require eight pages. In August Brooke typed out the second Newsletter. Only four people were present at the second committee meeting, this time at Brooke's parents' house in Hampton-in-Arden. Gallagher through family and work commitments could not attend.The Warwickshire Cricketers booklet - 36 pages in length, limited to 350 copies - was at the printers. It would be dispatched to the hundred members with a Notice announcing the extraordinary general meeting on October 13. Members duly received their copies, for non-members it was £1.25 post free. Seventeen years later, the final booklet in