Twenty-One Years of the ACS

an invaluable index to the first 77 issues ofThe Cricket Statistician and a year later he keyed in the data for the International Year Book when it fell behind schedule. Griffiths wasjoint author,with Stephen Eley,ofthe CricketSociety's Volume II of Padwick's Bibliography of Cricket and also produced the camera-ready copy when he typeset this prestigious work. On December 5,1987,the committee accepted an offer to establish an ACS office in a bookshop which Peter Wynne-Thomas was setting up across the road from the Trent Bridge ground.Nobody realised at the time that this was the first step towards the ACS six years later buying the premises as its headquarters. Wynne-Thomas, the Nottinghamshire CCC archivist and shortly to join its committee,had been aware for some time of the advantages that would accrue to the elub from having a proper bookshop on the ground. Part of his thinking was that there mightberoom for the ACSonsuch premises - at least as an outlet for sales - and the ACS committee had already discussed the implications. A site was originally earmarked in the players' car park area next to the main pavilion entrance before Nottinghamshire decided that the chosen place was too valuable for the purpose in mind. Wynne-Thomas was undeterred and when a shop at3 Radcliffe Road - opposite the Trent Bridge Inn - came on the market, he and his wife,Margaret,purchased the property privately. At the time the premises had been used for the repair of domestic appliances and before that as a betting shop. The purchase was completed on ^|^^H||||||H December 18, 1987 and Sport-in-Print opened soon afterwards. For the first two months the ACS virtually had the shop to itself but once it was equipped and stocked, the book business and the ACS co-existed happily and „ c ,, . . , . , , Peter Wynne-Thomas successfully side by side and continued to do so.The ACS paid no rent but it was agreed its administration officer would staff theshop four afternoons a week;it would pay part of the electricity and telephone bills; and would insure its own equipment, personnel and stock. From an ACS viewpoint the debt owed to Peter and Margaret Wynne-Thomas for providing a proper office at long last was incalculable. Following 15 years of improvisation, the ACS for the first time