West Indies Cricket Tour 1963
Martin Chandler |Published: 1963
Pages: 32
Author: Rosenwater, Irving
Publisher: Teletypesetting Ltd
Rating: 3.5 stars
This one isn’t a Rosenwater monograph, but it does bear his name and is worth recording for that reason alone, but more than that it is an excellent example of a fascinating aspect of cricket literature and collecting, the tour brochure.
As tours have disappeared and become merely Test series the old fashioned brochures that would accompany them have declined in number as well. Rosenwater’s sole venture into the genre is an object lesson in how to do the job properly, and remains immensely readable to this day.
The series in 1963, the first for the Wisden Trophy, turned out to be a classic, although Rosenwater had, of course, no idea that that would be the case when he started work on his brochure, one that is graced by a foreword from Sir Learie Constantine.
Back in 1963 the only overseas players in county cricket had given up their hopes of Test careers in order to play in the County Championship, and it was six long years since the 1957 West Indians had visited England. Only skipper Frank Worrell, Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, and Alf Valentine had appeared in the 1957 Test series, and the only other 1957 tourist returning in 1963 was Wes Hall, very much the junior member of the previous party.
The other twelve members of the group were unknown to most English cricket lovers, so all 17 members of the party receive detailed and thoroughly researched introductions from Rosenwater, as does manager Berkeley Gaskin.
Having introduced the players Rosenwater then provides a separate essay on Worrell, and follows that with all the relevant statistics and records, including potted scores of all ten previous series between the countries. It is difficult to imagine anyone other than Rosenwater having a say in the way in which the brochure was put together, and he certainly deserves every credit for it.
Why didn’t Rosenwater ever repeat the exercise? I have no idea, but the publishers, a company called Teletypesetting Limited did not, as far as I am aware, venture into the market again. This sort of publication inevitably relied to some extent on advertising. This one had only one advertiser, and they got five full pages, one devoted to each of five of their products. Their name? Imperial Tobacco Limited.
For his part I suspect that Rosenwater would have been happy to repeat the exercise, and indeed he did prepare pen portraits of the 1964 Australian tourists. According to Christopher Saunders first catalogue of items from the Rosenwater collection two copies of those were put together and specially bound. The catalogue goes on to say that one copy was given to book dealer Leslie Gutteridge. Of the other there is no mention but, sadly, I can confirm that it is not with Rosenwater’s own archive.
Leave a comment