Enthusiasts, experts and enjoyment

Richard Streeton on The Cricket Statistician—Part VII

It would be wrong to fail to acknowledge the enjoyment gleaned from articles by several other contributors, whose by-lines have appeared less frequently. As before, it can only be a matter of personal choice, but among those that, for varying reasons, have stayed longest in my memory have been pieces on two innings high on the list of those I wish I had seen: John W. Kobylecky’s ball-by-ball breakdown, minute by minute, of D.G. Bradman’s 334 at Leeds in 1930 in Issue No.53; and Ken Trushell’s report of W.G. Grace’s 400 not out against Grimsby XXII in 1876 in Issue No.69.

Interesting gaps in the game’s lore were filled by Edward Liddle in Issue No. 19, when he wrote about Sir Stanley Cochrane, the renowned Irish entrepreneur, one of the richest men to have played first-class cricket in the British Isles (“give or take an Indian potentate or two”), and Gerry Wolstenholme in Issue No. 71, when he traced the League performances of E.A. McDonald after the Tasmanian’s auspicious but brief Test-Match career.

I have also more than once had cause to admire the industry of David Jeater, not least for his fascinating list of umpires in the County Championship between 1890 and 1992 (Issue No.83). As an example of the fact that you never know what you might find in the journal, what about the case put forward in Issue No. 81, by a four-man team, that right-handed cricketers lived longer than left-handed ones?

The Journal has always kept pace with trends. As early as Issue No. 10, Leslie C. Fielding focused on the drop in modern over-rates—to my mind, surely the game’s greatest evil. Vic Isaacs wrote the first article on computers and cricket in Issue No. 51, and H.A.Heath put forward a scheme for establishing a world Test-Match championship in Issue No. 84, long before the ultimately successful campaign for it was mounted. 

Albeit on a sombre note, perhaps, there was R.J. Reynolds’ informative account in Issue No. 94 of bad crowd behaviour in past times. Then, on more quixotic fronts, how many members recall that Issue No. 9 featured a lengthy distillation from a conference report of the International Turfgrass Research Conference, dealing among other things, with experiments about a ball’s bounce and also the extent to which match statistics could be related to the clay content of pitch soil? Or that at least one issue (No. 11) contained a long slab of poetry—an extract from W.Belcher’s The Galaxy first available to readers, long before the ACS was founded, in 1790.

Not all such morsels might have been happily devoured by everyone, perhaps, but they have been indicative of the comprehensive variety of items which the journal has carried. It has come a long way from those early editions. so diligently compiled, typed, duplicated and stapled by Brooke at his family’s kitchen table.

Before leaving Memory Lane, let us remember, in particular, Issue No. 1 of The Cricket Statistician, which emerged in June 1973. As described in the ACS history, it only consisted of three foolscap pages (used on both sides) and Brooke and Sue Norris were credited jointly as editors. Miss Norris was a founder member, but did not retain her links long. Presumably in 50 years time she might well figure in an ACS quiz question—“Name the only woman editor of the Journal?”—and how many will be able to provide the correct answer?

Way back at the start I emphasised that journal contributors and readers had two fundamental things in common: They were experts, and they were enthusiasts. A supreme example of this came to light in Issues No. 83 and 92, when a relatively new member, J.R. Webber, described in two lengthy articles the problems he had encountered as he tackled a project aimed at producing a breakdown of W.G.Grace’s career along the lines of B.J. Wakley’s memorable opus on Bradman. As he pointed out, Grace played 1,478 first-class innings—compare with Bradman’s 338—making his task far more arduous. Webber decided not only to deal with Grace’s minor cricket performances, but to include even more detail and background where possible than Wakley had done. With my journalistic antennae quivering, I contacted Webber and found that after retiring from IBM, he had worked seven days a week for six years on what he called The Chronicle of WG. His book fills ‎1,102 A4 pages and contains 137,748 lines, 1,335,864 words—or 8,742,492 bytes in computer parlance. 

Throughout the labour on his book, Webber kept a computer diary in which he itemised his daily work. At last check, this contained another 60,000 words. Clearly an ultra-meticulous man, Webber went on to provide me with a breakdown of all his research material, now permanently enshrined on diskettes. The figures I have quoted so far, he said, were merely the tip of a 40 million byte iceberg, which included computer programs, analyses, progressive records and so on.

And finally, after all this, having unearthed many, many amendments to previously compiled figures and other details and tracked down descriptions of practically every significant stroke W.G. played, Webber still had to confess in the journal that final career figures for “The Great Cricketer’ could not be resolved and never would be! For such a long career as Grace’s, from so long ago, to be dissected in the fashion that Webber has done, frankly leaves the mind boggling. But to revert to the point I have been trying to prove throughout: What an expert, and what an enthusiast…

To end on a light note, I asked several colleagues what the journal and the game itself might be like in another 25 years. One felt it possible that since coloured clothing was again being worn, the wheel might continue to turn and round-arm or even under-arm bowling might come back. Another wondered if the environmental lobby would have won their fight to save the world’s trees, and if the journal, like virtually all printed matter, would have gone out of existence. Along the same lines, a third reckoned that electronic processes were advancing at such a speed that the 200th Journal would certainly only be available on a screen, with members calling up only the particular pages that appealed to them. [We were are delighted to report that the 200th edition appeared in both print and digital form.—ED.] He added that this would happen sooner rather than later, and unlike some approached, did not have his tongue in his cheek. 

A particularly enjoyable response came from Mick Pope, one of the best of the new wave of younger ACS historians, whom I have not previously associated with such irony. He listed four items that would probably appear in the Journal’s contents page towards the end of the year 2022 or thereabouts:

1) Updated Test and one-day records for Kenya, prime force in the world game.

2) Latest eight-a-side indoor day/night results from Canada, with full tables.

3) Complete competition records of the defunct English County Championship.

4) The unabridged, secret book reviews of Robert Brooke, libels and all. 

This article is adapted from the version which first appeared in the hundredth edition of The Cricket Statistician, published in Winter 1997. To join the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, and subscribe to the journal, please visit our website: