The Cricketers’ Who’s Who 2025
Martin Chandler |Published: 2025
Pages: 640
Author: Moorehead, Benj (Editor)
Publisher: Fairfield Books
Rating: 3 stars
I could, and ordinarily would, devote the first paragraph or two of this review to a few bibliographical snippets about a book which, in 2025, reaches its 46th edition. The problem is however that I have never actually opened a copy before, let alone acquired one.
There are a couple of reasons for that, one being that my greater cricketing interest lies with players and matches from long ago rather than from the present day. The other, and if truth be told the more compelling, is the same reason I have always eschewed county yearbooks and overseas annuals. What if I read it and enjoyed it? Where would I put it and the other 45 books I would then feel obliged to buy?
It is not without a sense of some relief therefore that I can report that the acquisition of this year’s model did not send me straight onto ebay in search of a job lot of the first 45 editions. That said I can see that The Cricketers’ Who’s Who is a thoroughly worthwhile publication, and I can see why it has the loyal following that has sustained it since 1980.
The bulk of the book, more than 500 pages of it, devotes a single page to each of the male and female players in the county game. I had already realised, before the point was underlined in Rory Burns’ foreword, that the size and format of the book lends itself to the needs of the autograph collector – I wonder if anyone will have the determination to get the full set?
The individual pages contain basic biographical details, career records across all formats and, crucially for the signature hunters, a photograph. This is all useful and important information and there is some entertainment as well most of the players having taken the trouble to respond to a questionnaire from the publishers. Those who did not, mainly those based overseas, are the subject of a few notes.
Many of the questions asked are cricketing ones, and it was gratifying to note how many of the younger players value the red ball game. But inevitably the more memorable answers are those that cause amusement. I particularly like one answer from the 5’ 9” 20 year old Sussex off spinner Bertie Foreman who, when asked for one thing he’d like to do before he died, expressed a wish to grow to be 6’ tall.
The profiles apart there are some basic details of the First Class counties and last summer’s averages for each of them as well as, in the closing section, details of the results from last summer, competition by competition, together with overall comparison tables for the leading players. For those of us who like that sort of thing there are, at the front of the book, a couple of narrative sections being a two page foreword from Surrey skipper Burns and a four page editorial from Benj Moorehead.
All in all I have to say that there is a good deal more to The Cricketer’s Who’s Who 2025 than simply being a means for autograph collectors to preserve their trophies and I will certainly be consulting it regularly in the coming weeks when, as is inevitably the case these days, I see individuals performing in the county game whose names are unfamiliar to me.
Leave a comment