Twenty-One Years of the ACS

but it is relevant to touch upon some that emerged as the 1980s passed. Robert Brooke seems to have been the first to wonder if there was scope to trace old cricket grounds and to make known their exact sites, accompanied if possible by'then and now'pictures. Brooke's train ofthought wassparked after an inept performance by Warwickshire at Abbeydale Park, Sheffield, in 1979.An early finish gave Tony Woodhouse the opportunity to take Brooke on a tour of disused Yorkshire grounds and the inspiration for the grounds' book series came as they stood looking at terraced houses on what once had been the Holbeck ground. The appearance of Aylwin Sampson's Grounds ofAppeal in 1981 decided the committee to delay the series but it began three years later with Cricket Grounds ofNottinghamshire. The series has featured some of the most erudite research undertaken for the ACS by the various authors and has served to widen the historical aspects of its work.Initially the series was under the guidance of Les Hatton, who saw it as an opportunity that could be linked with visits to adjoining pubs in his capacity as a member of the Campaign for Real Ale(CAMRA). Hatton (born 1934), a committee member since 1978, wrote the Worcestershire grounds' booklet,the second to appear.From the start of the Sunday League, Hatton established himself as the competition's leading statistician. In 1987 he produced a record book for this event to mark the end of John Player's 18-year sponsorship and he revised this in j.' 1993when the 40-overformatended. ^ From 1988 Hatton has had charge of ^iiii9H||||^ aPB Second XI Annual and he is currently the ACS marketing manager.Hatton is a tooling engineer these days but for many years he was a professional musician. Originally MIHb he played clarinet, flute and Les Hatton saxophone with the Royal Artillery band before joining sundry dance hall bands in the Midlands. He still free-lances in jazz clubs and the theatre pits. Hatton received his second name, Walter,after his father had been enraptured a few weeks before his son was born as he watched Hammond make 265 not out against Worcestershire at Dudley in July, 1934. The completion of the Australian state booklets in 1984 with South Australian Cricketers (1877-1984)was especially rewarding for everyone involved,not least to Roger Page and Ken Williams, without whom a series requiring much research would never have reached its successful conclusion.More than 250 ACS members live outside Britain and some two-thirds of these reside in Australia, the scene in