Twenty-One Years of the ACS

organised the London meeting and has aeted as overseer for the statistical survey series. Heald is also engaged in listing the season by season performances of every cricketer to have played anywhere in the world. He already has the details for 12,000 players on his sheets and - working backwards - has reached 1945. Richard Streeton (Peter Wynne-Thomas writes: The background to the ACS's changed thinking on the subject ofapresident has to be given bysomeone other than the author.For thefirst decade or so the association was run by its pioneers - Pa united group who were attempting lone individuals' efforts. By 1985 the w nearing completion; the vast Who's ^ , Who with every first-class cricketer ' in the British Isles had been ^ published; the Minor Counties and „ , , Second XI annuals had become standard reference works; and more than twenty years had been covered in thefirst-class match scores series. What the association lacked wassomeone with an in-depth grasp ofcricket statistics and at thesame time a good working knowledge of international and county cricket outside the narrow field of statistics.Such aperson, it wasfelt, would bring afresh perspective to the ACS. Few people were qualified for the task but the association was fortunate that one who did,soon showed his worth when he was co-opted on to the committee. Theycould havefounda notablefigure-head, aspatron or president, in the way in which many societies do. Their name, their occasional presence and their contacts can be ofsome use, but the ACS really required more than these attributes - someone willing to become actively involved. Richard Streeton (born 1930), a long established and respected name in cricketjournalism, and in 1985 with The Times, had travelled the world reporting cricket. He had met virtually all the people who were involved in writing about cricket and more particularly the history and statistics of the game and had, in 1981, won the Cricket Society's literary award with a biography ofP.O.H.Fender. This was the man elected as thefirstpresidentoftheACS in 1987.No-one knew precisely