ACS AGM 2025 – save the date!
The next Annual General Meeting of the ACS will be on Saturday 22 March 2025 at 10.00 GMT. As in recent years, it will be convened via Zoom. We will send members more details nearer the time.
ACS Members Meeting in October 2024
Saturday 12 October saw around 30 ACS members meet at the Union Jack Club in London. The in-person gathering resulted from positive feedback after last year’s anniversary event, which had allowed many members to get together for the first time since the Covid pandemic.
The meeting was hosted by John Bryant, Chair of the ACS General Committee, who welcomed members and guests from different parts of the country. The day featured a varied and entertaining series of talks. In the morning, they were:
- Jeremy Lonsdale, who spoke about Bill Bowes, the Yorkshire and England bowler, and the subject of his recently published biography, An Unusual Celebrity: The Many Cricketing Lives of Bill Bowes (Pitch Publishing).
- Tony Watts, who was interviewed by Peter Hardy about his forthcoming ACS book Town v Gown; City v Village: A History of Cricket in Cambridge, published on 1 November.
- Chris O’Brien, who discussed the current exciting work under way in developing the Peter Wynne-Thomas Library at Trent Bridge, Nottingham.
Over lunch, members had the opportunity to mix with old friends and make new contacts. In the afternoon session, there were four more speakers.
- Keith Walmsley provided an ACS records update and then hosted a cricket quiz of 40 questions of varying difficulty. Philip Bailey secured first prize.
- David Kendix, ACS President, was interviewed by Peter Hardy on his work with the ICC, with particular responsibility for identifying statistical trends in the game and drafting playing regulations, as well as his work on team rankings.
- Annie Chave spoke about her life in cricket, including setting up and editing the quarterly magazine County Cricket Matters, involvement in cricket commentary for Somerset matches, and as an active supporter of the recreational game.
Jo Rice brought the day to a close with a talk about the work of the Kent Cricket Heritage Trust, set up to encourage the study and promotion of cricket in Kent, and to maintain and display the club’s archives and artefacts.
The day proved a great success and further events are likely to be held in future. Thanks go to all the speakers for their interesting and entertaining talks, as well as to Peter Hardy, Huw Nathan, John Bryant and Keith Walmsley for organising and running the day.
ACS honoured with Howard Milton Award
The ACS is the winner of the 2024 Howard Milton Award for Cricket Scholarship.
The Howard Milton Award is a collaboration between the Cricket Society and the British Society of Sports History. It is made annually to a person or persons who have made an outstanding and/or unsung contribution to cricket scholarship, and seeks to recognise good cricket writing and research, whether of an academic or popular nature.
The award is named after Howard Milton, the eminent cricket historian and statistician, Honorary Librarian at the Cricket Society for over 40 years, and the ACS Statistician of the Year in 1994.
Cricket Society Chair Peter Hardy said: ‘The ACS is a marvellous organisation dedicated to the enjoyment, interpretation and research of cricket statistics and history. It is populated by some of the most impressive individuals I have come across in over 50 years’ involvement in cricket, and their commitment to excellence is inspiring. The way the ACS is run and what it stands for are an example to all voluntary organisations in the cricket, and indeed the wider sporting, world. They thoroughly deserve to win the 2024 Howard Milton Award for Cricket Scholarship.’
John Bryant, the Chair of the ACS, received the trophy from former Cricket Society Chair Nigel Hancock at the annual conference of the British Society of Sports History. ‘I am delighted that the ACS has been selected as the 2024 winner of the prestigious Howard Milton Award,’ he said. ‘It is a great honour, and I know both the members and the committee of the ACS will be thrilled to have been recognised. The ACS is formed of many committed statisticians and historians, all seeking a level of excellence in their work which we always aim to better.’
What is the ACS?
Who is the oldest man to hit a Test match century? What is the most expensive bowling analysis in first-class cricket? Does a match start with the toss, the call of ‘Play’ or the first delivery?
If you are intrigued by such conundrums, or if you’re interested in the origins and history of the game, you’ll find a group of like minds in the ACS. Founded in 1973, we are an international body represented in over 20 countries, and our members include most of the world’s leading cricket statisticians and several of its most accomplished historians and biographers.
Our principal purpose is ‘to promote and encourage research into the statistical and historical aspects of cricket throughout the world at all levels and to publish the findings’. Members of the ACS have significantly contributed to a wider understanding of the game and have led the way in uncovering many biographical details of first-class cricketers.
We have around 800 members all over the world. Membership is open to everyone – all you need to join us is to share our interest in the statistics and history of the game. The ACS aims to appeal to people with an interest in every form of the game. Although in the past, much of its work has focused on men’s first-class cricket, more recently it has published material on women’s cricket and taken the lead, for example, on developing statistics for the new Hundred competition.
To encourage research work on a broad range of topics which are likely to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, the ACS will:
- continue to invite contributions to its activities from all its members;
- actively encourage new projects related to forms of cricket which have received less attention in the past (including recreational cricket, women’s cricket, disabled cricket etc);
- seek to take the lead in the collection of statistics for these and other under-researched aspects of the game;
- selectively offer financial support to worthwhile projects which are aligned with the ACS’s objectives; and
- make regular use of different social media platforms to engage with a more diverse audience.
Members receive our quarterly journal, The Cricket Statistician, and an annual voucher, currently worth £8, towards the cost of our printed publications. They are entitled to a 33% discount on subscriptions to the Cricket Archive website and to the CSW cricket database. Members can also join our email forum to share information, ask questions and chat about topical cricketing issues. Details about the email forum and discounts are available in the Members Area; any member who does not have the password for this page should contact webmaster@acscricket.com.
We publish a range of titles which are available in the ACS Online Shop.
The website includes several valuable research tools open to all visitors:
- The digitised version of Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game, the magazine which ran from 1882 to 1914.
- The ACS Online Cricket Records Section, which is updated on a daily basis and covers first-class cricket, Test cricket, List A, Twenty20 and women’s international cricket, with some minor cricket records too.
- The archive of The Cricket Statistician up to 2021 in digitised form; copies of more recent issues are still on sale in the shop.
- Our Research Section which contains further resources, including the first two parts of a massive A to Z of Kent Cricketers, compiled by Derek Carlaw and covering all Kent players who appeared between 1806 and 1999, plus County Cricket: Sundry Extras, biographical details compiled by David Jeater on over a thousand county cricketers with achievements in areas of public life away from cricket.
- Our Collaborative Research Projects – if you’d like to get involved in our research, there’s a list in the Research Section of collaborative projects we have set up since March 2020 on topics such as women’s cricket, league cricket, national competitions, county committees, scorebooks, cricketers who died in war, and more; do get in touch if you’d like to join in (contact details on the Collaborative Research Projects page).
- Our answers to a number of Frequently Asked Questions about the statistics and history of cricket
- Ask the ACS, a collection of statistical questions and answers on specialised one-off matters.
You can also follow the Association via Twitter, at @ACScricket; on Instagram, at acscricket; on Facebook, at Association of Cricket Statisticians & Historians; on YouTube, at ACScricket; on Mastodon, at @ACScricket@mstdn.social; on Bluesky at @ACScricket.bsky.social; and on Substack at acscricket.substack.com (more details here).
You can watch a video interview with founder Robert Brooke on the ACS YouTube channel, and read more about the formation and earlier years of the ACS, and about the individuals whose hugely-valued efforts set us on our current path, in Twenty-One Years of the ACS, by our late President, Richard Streeton.
If you are looking for an answer to any question about cricket, seeking clarification about a particular record or feat, or searching for information on a team or a particular player, please send an email to secretary@acscricket.com and the Secretary will point you in the right direction.
Latest publications
Please order by 18 December for despatch before Christmas.
The 16th edition of the Overseas First-Class Annual is now on sale; covering all first-class cricket worldwide in 2023/24, it includes 559 full scorecards, and brief narratives plus league tables of each country’s first-class tournaments.
Our latest publications include Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin: Masters of their Craft, in which John Shawcroft’s account of the Derbyshire fast bowlers who formed the most dangerous new-ball attack in the County Championship throughout most of the 1950s. Jackson and Gladwin came from mining villages, and their physiques were developed by years at the coalface, but they received little recognition from England’s Test selectors: Jackson appeared in only two Tests, 12 years apart, which Fred Trueman put down to snobbery, while Gladwin played eight Tests and toured South Africa, but operated in Alec Bedser’s shadow.
In Town v Gown; City v Village: A History of Cricket in Cambridge, Tony Watts examines Cambridge’s rich cricket culture and tradition. Though Town and Gown never harnessed their joint resources satisfactorily, the University provided first-class cricket for well over a century, bringing county and international teams to Fenner’s, while strong city clubs played ‘friendly’ cricket on college grounds. But in recent years, university cricket has lost its first-class status, and the growth of integrated club leagues has shifted the balance from city clubs to surrounding villages. This book is back in stock after the initial print run sold out.
The latest issue of The Cricket Statistician, edited by Jonathan Northall, is sent to members in their quarterly mailings, but extra copies and previous issues are available in the shop.
Simon Sweetman’s You Can’t Hurry Us: A History of Cricket in Suffolk which covers the background to county cricket in Suffolk in the eighteenth century, through progress from two to three-day games, to the adoption of one-day and T20 cricket, taking in the club scene, the start of league cricket and women’s cricket.
In Ernest Parker: Not a Love Story, Max Bonnell and Andrew Sproul tell the story of the finest cricketer produced by Western Australia before the Second World War, whose premature death in the Great War was a tragedy that resounded throughout his home state. But, while everyone in Western Australia knew about Ernest Parker, hardly anyone really knew or understood him.
In The Cricket Professionals of Oxford, Michael Stimpson tells the stories of professional cricketers from the Oxford area over 200 years. These include underarm bowler Peter Bancalari in the 1820s, fiery roundarm bowler David Burrin in the 1850s, and fast man ‘Brusher’ Rogers at the end of the Victorian era; between the wars, George Brown and Johnny Arnold batted for England, and more recently Jack Brooks was a championship winner with Yorkshire.
The ACS International Cricket Year Book 2024 provides detailed information about every current player worldwide, listing all men who appeared in First-Class, List A Limited-Overs or Twenty20 cricket in 2022/23 and 2023, plus women internationals.
The Second Eleven Annual provides potted scores for all Second Eleven Championship and Twenty20 matches in 2023, with comprehensive averages, players’ biographies and statistical highlights, a detailed listing of grounds used, plus 2024 fixtures.
Our sales offers include A Game Emerging: Yorkshire cricket before the coming of the All England Eleven, in which Jeremy Lonsdale extended his acclaimed series on Yorkshire cricket back to the 1750s (you can listen to an interview with Jeremy about the book on YouTube); All Ten, Chris Overson’s account of the 81 instances of ten wickets in a first-class innings from 1848 to 2009; and First-Class Matches: Pakistan 1984/85 to 1986/87.
All books published in the last year which remain in stock appear under Latest Publications.
Many earlier publications are available in the online shop, including extra copies of the ACS Journal, The Cricket Statistician.
If you need to get in touch with ACS Sales, their contact details are here.
Introducing the Members’ Marketplace
The ACS has launched a Members’ Marketplace to facilitate members selling cricket-related printed material (books, magazines, scorebooks, scorecards, etc) to each other. The marketplace will operate on a similar basis to small ads, so any transaction will be between the buyer and the seller; the ACS will not act as an agent, will take no fee, and will not guarantee the description or condition of any items. Instructions for using the marketplace are on the webpage.
We have now added an Items Wanted page where members may request items they are looking for, so do look if you think you might be able to help.
ACS Statistics Logistics sub-group
The ACS has created a Statistics Logistics sub-group drawn from the ACS committee, members of the Association, and members of the scoring and umpiring community, to discuss and advise on the recording or calculation of cricket statistics.
The group’s answers to a batch of questions, and explanations of how they reached their decisions, are available in a PDF document here.
The group has also discussed how to treat statistics for the ECB’s 100-ball competition, after consultation with ACS members, ECB officials, Wisden and Cricket Archive. Their advice on how to handle statistics for The Hundred is available in pdf form here.
Diversity and Equality Statement
The ACS Diversity and Equality Statement sets out the Association’s objective of seeking to appeal to people with an interest in every form of the game.
It recognises that, although in the past much of its work has focused on men’s first-class cricket, more recently it has published material on women’s cricket and taken the lead, for example, on developing statistics for the new Hundred competition.
The statement sets out ways in which the ACS will seek to encourage research work on a broad range of topics, designed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. These include continuing to invite contributions to its activities from all members, actively encouraging new projects related to forms of cricket that have received less attention in the past, and seeking to lead on the collection of statistics for under-researched aspects of the game.
More ACS news
A summary of recent website updates
Join the ACS
If you are not yet a member of the Association, we very much hope that you will consider joining. Click on Join the ACS and follow the links and instructions there.
We have recently added the option of digital membership, for those who prefer to receive the quarterly mailing in electronic form.
Once you have joined, you will have access to the Members Area and can subscribe to the Members’ Email Forum. Members can obtain the password for the Members Area by sending an email to webmaster@acscricket.com.