Twenty-One Years of the ACS

that the game and its players always reflected their times. An era of instant communications, food and other basics, must be expected to bring further encroachment by the one-day game and one suspects that most current ACS members lean towards traditional,first-class fixtures. As early as 1975 in Issue No.12of The Cricket Statistician, Kit Bartlett traced the increase of one-day fixtures, in relation to the first-class programme.He felt that there would be a lotofsupportfor a move to halt this trend and wondered if the ACSshould start a campaign to do so! Steven Draper has calculated that the world's 40,000th first-class match will probably take place towards the end of the 1994-95 season.Could anyone with confidence predict when the 50,000th match will be played? Computers,too, will undoubtedly alter the research patterns in future years for ACS members as yet unborn, and the microchip has already been responsible for putting the time-honoured scorebook in jeopardy. On this tack Robert Brooke - in despondent mood - once again can be relied upon to provide an apt comment.In the Spring, 1991,Journal, Brooke wondered if the days of the amateur statistician were very much numbered. He lamented the approaching end *of the many coloured pens and pencils, the myriad note-books, the spare room or attic stacked with sheaves of unindexed (and unindexible) and often indecipherable notes, the hours spent searching for a reference eventually found acting as a book mark or draught excluder ...' This was a colourful passage,containing more than a grain of truth, and must have invoked a pang for many an ACS worker. It was part of a generous review Brooke gave to Richard Lockwood's Digest ofthe 1990 Season and Brooke ended: *Yet - it is a sad day that the amateur statistician now has so much done for him,it is hardly, really worth bothering any more.' This might be thought to bea sombre note on which to finish and all right thinking ACS devotees will hope, sincerely, that Brooke has over-stated the case. Surely there will be as many challenges ahead as there have been in the first 21 years? They may be different ones but there is no reason to doubt that they will be surmounted and that the ACS will continue to flourish. 43