Famous Cricketers No 76 - J.N.Crawford

Acknowledgments and an Explanatory Note I have completed this work on behalf of my friend and writing partner Nigel Hart who died in December 1997. At that time I made a commitment to Nigel’s widow Genia and his three daughters Prudence, Rhiannon and Cadence to do so and am sorry it has taken so long to finish. In essence Nigel did the bulk of the original research and writing. My contribution has been to edit and reorder the text, expand the seasonal summaries, check the season-by-season statistics, and compile and balance the consolidated statistics. From Nigel’s correspondence it appears that he had a bigger biographical project in mind, one idea, a book - The Cricketing Crawfords ; or a second combining the Crawford and Townsend cricketing families. Before the onset of his illness Nigel intended travelling to England with his family in 1997 where he would have undertaken additional primary research. It is hard to know exactly the people to thank here but I will take a measured stab at those correspondents who between 1993 and 1995 seemed to provide the greatest help to the project. John Walker of Wadebridge, Cornwall and secretary of the Old Reptonian Society, certainly sent valuable information on Crawford’s Repton years, and clues and suggestions to follow up in the period after he returned to England. Jim Sullivan of Radio National, Dunedin and the author of ‘Crawford: The Missing Years’ in The Cricketer in March 1992, was a mine of information on Crawford’s New Zealand period while others from New Zealand to give valuable assistance were fellow Dunedinites David Richmond, who forwarded details from early Otago Cricket Association records, and Rod Nye. In Adelaide, architect and historian Giles Walkley passed on interesting 1988 research he uncovered regarding Crawford’s will, and correspondence with Crawford’s second wife Hilda May then aged 95. J.W. Curtis, a former master at St. Peter’s College, allowed access to an unpublished paper he had written on Crawford’s years at the college. Others who helped out with smaller queries were Repton archivist F.H.G.Percy, Surrey Cricket Club librarian Peter Large, Rochedale Cricket and Lacrosse Club chairman D.J.Coleman, and Hilda May Crawford’s nephew Godfrey Smith. My apologies to anyone who has been omitted. Bernard Whimpress 47