The criteria for winning the Brooke-Lambert Trophy says “outstanding services to cricket statistics and historical research, usually in the past year, but sometimes taking into account a lifetime’s achievement”.
The winner of this year’s award falls very much into the lifetime achievement category.
Marion Collin played cricket at school and, after leaving in 1962, joined the famous Redoubtables Women’s Cricket Club. As well as playing for the Redoubtables for nearly 35 years, she served the club as scorer, umpire, committee member and chairman. Marion also played for Surrey, and is a qualified umpire and scorer who has scored four Test matches and numerous ODIs.
In 1973, Marion took over the role of honorary statistician to the Women’s Cricket Association from club colleague Margaret Dickens. This side of her career grew when early retirement from her job in local government meant that she had more time for cricket: the International Women’s Cricket Council appointed her as its first official statistician in 1995. She has kept records of all official matches since then, completing the huge task of transferring paper versions of the scorecards into a computer database.
As ECB statistician, Marion has compiled records for the Women’s County Championship and other women’s domestic competitions, sharing this information with anyone who asked for it.
As the WCA’s archivist, Marion was instrumental in helping to source material for the archival website womenscrickethistory.org. She continues to work on producing archival material, as well as statistical information on women’s cricket for other websites including CricInfo, Cricket Archive, Cricket History, and of course the ACS, her latest contribution being in January this year.
There is much more that could be said about Marion’s contribution to the history of the women’s game, but I don’t have enough time. I am pleased to be able to tell you, briefly, about this year’s Brooke-Lambert Trophy winner – Marion Collin.
Peter Griffiths
You can watch an interview with Marion Collin in February 2023 on the ACS YouTube channel.
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