A tribute from Andrew Hignell
Cyril Robert Waite, who died in Newport on 30 November 2024, was the Association’s expert on Monmouthshire and, in this capacity, greatly assisted the late Tony Webb and his team during the Minor Counties research project. During this time, he painstakingly checked and double-checked the identities of the many quite obscure cricketers who turned out for the Welsh county between the 1890s and their merger with Glamorgan County Cricket Club in 1934.
He also meticulously produced a list of queries for Monmouthshire’s games against Glamorgan which I was only too pleased to receive, especially as they helped to fill gaps or answer discrepancies for matches at Rodney Parade or Ebbw Vale, and some of the scorecards in the Cardiff-based newspapers were different from the correct version published in the editions for the Newport area. The latter sources – thanks to Cyril’s research – often contained more detailed match reports and gave accurate accounts of the number of boundaries which batters struck, as well as full bowling figures with details of overs and maidens bowled.
A railway engineer by profession, Cyril was also the 1st XI scorer for Newport Fugitives CC for over twenty years, and his polite, unflappable and respectful manner made him the ideal companion to work with in a scorebox. Cricket in south-east Wales has lost a true gentleman.