Famous Cricketers No 95 - P.A.Perrin

Summary of cricket career Perrin’s position as one of the ‘great old warhorses’ of county cricket is secure. Only forty players have played in more matches in the County Championship, and only six have appeared in more seasons. Only three, W.E.Astill, W.G.Quaife and F.J.Titmus, who have appeared in matches in the ‘official’ competition starting in 1890, have had a career span from first match to last, greater than Perrin’s 32 years 85 days. Only twenty-two batsmen have scored more runs in the Championship: of those only two, Alan Jones and John Langridge did not play in Test cricket. Even then, Jones played in the England matches of 1970 against The Rest of the World, when the South African tour was cancelled; and Langridge was selected for the abandoned tour of India in 1939-1940. The closest Perrin came to Test cricket was probably before the 1901-02 tour to Australia, when according to J.E.Clay, the Essex statistician in the 1960s, he seems to have been asked whether he would be available. He told his inquirer that he was ‘unable to consider’. In terms of quality, he belongs to that coterie of English cricketers who have been identified as a Cricketer of the Year by Wisden , but have not appeared in a Test match. Excluding Great War schoolboys, these number 46 in all. But he was better than many of those 46. Two of the best known attempts to select a hypothetical England side comprised of players who had never played Test cricket were published almost together in the early 1980s. These selections were made by Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Wisden Book of County Cricket in 1981, and by the late Derek Lodge in Figures on the Green in 1982. There were five players who appeared in both elevens. Perrin was one of those five, the others being John Langridge, H.K.Foster, C.J.Kortright, and T.G.Wass. One or two more recent players might have displaced him from such a selection, but it would be a close run thing. His contribution to Essex was massive. For much of his playing career, the county’s attempt to be East London’s representative in the Championship was a financial struggle. The club placed great reliance on him turning out season after season at little cost to the organisation. He received little by way of appreciation from the committee, and perhaps because of his ‘quiet, even retiring disposition’, he was watched with ‘interest and admiration’ rather than with affection by the Leyton crowd. He continued to play for the county long after there was any possibility of receiving representative honours. On some occasions he would have had little satisfaction from the team’s performance or from his own. Because of the limited attention he gave to his business interests in the summer months, there would have been a consequence in terms of income foregone. Here was a man who gave a high priority to cricket, which the county eventually recognised by making him a life member in 1930 and a vice-president in 1932. Test selector Perrin was a member of the selection committee appointed by the Board of Control which ran Test matches in England in 1926, and again from 1931 to 1939. In 1939 he chaired the committee. His membership of that body was unusual in that he had not previously taken part in the administration of the game, and he had not played Test cricket himself. His tenure covered ten Test series at home, of which seven were won and two lost: few have served longer. In these series England played 35 matches, some against weak opposition, winning eleven matches, losing four and drawing twenty. A statistical appendix to Allen Synge’s book on the selectors, Sins of Omission , compiled by Robert Anns, puts Perrin high in the ‘selector’s averages’ on the basis of these figures. In addition Perrin was a member of the MCC selection committees which selected the sides to tour Australia in 1932-33 and 1936-37, and the side for the abandoned tour to India in 1939-40. After the Great War, Perrin had acquired a reputation as a good judge of players. As early as 1906 he had spotted the talents of C.F.Root, later a Test player, when as a sixteen-year-old he coached the 16