The Shorter Wisden 2013 (6 page)

Charles Pardon founded the CRA on April 17, 1880, taking with him staff from the Sporting Press Agency, which had employed him as a reporter but folded following the death a year earlier of the
owner, George Kelly King. There were various homes for the new agency. The first reference in
Wisden
came at the end of the 1891 preface, which placed them at 112 Fleet Street
.
Later, they moved down the road to No. 85, where they were a tenant of the Press Association at Byron House, until it was demolished in 1935. The new building would be occupied by Reuters, though
the CRA (and PA) – after a temporary spell round the corner at 23 St Bride Street – returned to the new premises to rent office space.

Agency reporting is traditionally factual, straightforward and reliable, qualities which were to characterise the early style of
Wisden
itself. But there was also a financial imperative
not to waste words: the length of agency reports determined their cost, and press telegrams were not cheap. The charge was one shilling for every 75 words transmitted between 9am and 6pm, and for
every 100 words between 6pm and 9am.

Press reports were originally sent from the local post office or, increasingly, from a dedicated telegraph office at the ground itself. A row of small uniformed messenger boys sat at the back of
the press box, chattering animatedly as they waited to be despatched with newspaper copy on a stentorian shout of “Boy!”, “Copy!” or “Telegram!” But this was no
simple task either.
Wisden 1893
carried a study of facilities for journalists, written by a future editor, Stewart Caine, who described the shortcomings of some counties: “When
telegraph wires were extended to the ground, no effort was made to place the press box and the telegraph office in proximity.”

Overseas scores for early
Wisdens
were taken initially from Australian and other newspapers, arriving in the UK many weeks or months after the games had finished. It was not until
1928-29 that a CRA staff man was sent to cover an MCC tour. The reports by Sydney Southerton, another editor-to-be, on the 4–1 defeat of Australia were well received, lively and forthright,
and in 1932-33 Southerton was meant to go again. But after some debate with PA, Reuters insisted on sending their own man: Gilbert Mant, a hard-working 30-year-old Australian on the London staff,
who had reported little cricket, and now kept strictly to his brief to refrain from comment.

Sixty years later, Mant wrote of his dilemma over England’s tactics. Saying he was “sickened” by Bill Woodfull’s injury in the Adelaide Test, he added: “I was in a
hopeless catch-22 situation... If I showed the slightest sign of taking sides about Bodyline, or suggesting it was a threat to cricket, my reports would be censored, and I would probably be
replaced. That was when I felt that Sydney Southerton should have been there instead of me. Southerton, writing under a byline, would probably have been able to speak his mind about the general
atmosphere... So, reluctantly, I joined Jack Hobbs [reporting via a ghostwriter for the
News Chronicle
and
Star
] in not rocking the boat... I was to some extent leading the
British public astray. It has been on my conscience ever since.” Southerton was to make a scathing attack on Bodyline, sight unseen, in his editor’s Notes in 1934, which leaves one to
wonder how differently the series might have been presented to England had he, not Mant, reported from Australia.

The CRA sent journalists on tour more regularly after the war. In 1955, one of them, Reg Hayter – the agency’s chief cricket reporter – went on to launch his own agency, a
high-pressure training school for many sportswriters who graduated to Fleet Street. But the CRA sent no one to South Africa in 1964-65 and – with their future in some doubt – they were
taken over by PA in 1965. Terry Cooper, who was signed by the CRA in 1962, married one of the agency’s secretaries, and later reported on cricket and rugby for PA until his retirement in
1999, explained the takeover: “The penny dropped with PA – they were paying us for something they could do themselves.”

But it was the CRA editors who set the firmest stamp on the Almanack, from Charles Pardon in 1887 to Norman Preston in 1980. The only non-CRA
Wisden
editor in that time was Haddon
Whitaker, who presided over four Almanacks during the Second World War. Pardon himself worked on only four editions, but longevity was generally a hallmark: his brother Sydney worked on 39, Caine
47, Southerton at least 32, Wilfrid Brookes 15, Hubert Preston 51 (he missed the 1916–1920 editions while on military service), and his son Norman 47. Between them, the seven CRA men edited
90
Wisdens
.

Because of the influence exerted on the agency from their foundation by Charles and his two brothers, the CRA were often known simply as Pardon’s. The trio had tackled their new roles with
youthful enthusiasm (Charles was 30, Sydney 25, Edgar 20), and were rewarded in 1886 when Wisden’s owner, Henry Luff, invited the CRA to compile the following year’s Almanack, with
Charles as editor. So began the association that would sustain Wisden for nine decades. When Charles died, aged 40 – Edgar would die eight years later – Sydney stepped in and, over the
next 35 editions, forged the Almanack’s reputation as cricket’s most authoritative voice. On his death in 1925,
Wisden
described him as “the man who shaped the Almanack
into the publication it is today”.

The CRA also campaigned for a more satisfactory method of deciding the County Championship than simply awarding it to the team suffering fewest defeats – the method used from 1865 to 1886.
The agency proposed one point for a win, and half a point for a draw. But this produced its own problems, notably in 1889, when Surrey, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire all finished on 10½.
Reacting promptly, the counties and MCC devised a new system which, with adjustments, still applies today.

After the Pardons came Caine. He had been at the CRA from the word go, was close to the Pardons, and edited Wisden’s
Rugby Football Almanack
for the three years that it ran from
1924 to 1926. Sydney Southerton was the son of the round-arm slow bowler James Southerton, who was the oldest player to make a Test debut – at 49 years 119 days at Melbourne in 1876-77, in
Test cricket’s inaugural match – and the first Test cricketer to die, a little over three years later. Sydney was working as a ship’s steward when he met Jack Blackham’s
1893 Australians aboard the
Liguria
en route to England. He was engaged as scorer for the tour, and Sydney Pardon, impressed by his work, employed him at the end of the season as the
CRA’s statistician. Widely known as “Figure Fiend”, Southerton later became a partner, editing
Wisden
in 1934 and 1935. His end was sudden: at the age of 60, he collapsed
and died after proposing the toast to “Cricket” at the Ferrets Club dinner at The Oval in 1935.

In fact, five of the seven CRA men to edit
Wisden
died while still in the job. The exceptions were Wilfrid Brookes, who resigned abruptly after the last of his four Almanacks in 1939,
having overseen the major revamp of the 75th edition, and was hardly heard of again until his obituary was published in
Wisden 1956
; and Hubert Preston, who did not edit the first of his
eight
Wisdens
until he was 74 – comfortably the oldest starting age for any of its editors.

The Preston dynasty had begun in 1944, when Hubert was appointed editor. He learned his trade at the
Manchester Guardian’s
London office and had a brief spell farming in Canada.
He joined the CRA in 1895, became a partner in 1920, and did not retire until 1951. By then, the CRA had four partners: the two Prestons, plus Ebenezer Eden, who was credited in 50 Almanacks up to
1975, and Harry Gee, who worked on the 1934–1971 editions. Leslie Smith, who first contributed to
Wisden
in 1935, was never a partner, but played a central role. He died in 2011,
aged 97.

Norman Preston, who joined the agency in 1933, succeeded his father in 1952, and would guide
Wisden
through 29 editions. Following Hubert’s death in 1960, Neville Cardus wrote in
Wisden
that he was “with [Sydney] Pardon and Stewart Caine, the most courteous and best-mannered man ever to be seen in a press box on a cricket ground”. Preston, Eden and Gee
all accepted positions at PA after the merger in 1965, but when Preston retired in 1968,
Wisden’s
association with PA came to an end, though he continued to edit the Almanack as a
freelance until his death in 1980.

Today, the contribution of the agency to cricket reporting is commemorated by the Sydney Pardon press box at The Oval. On the first floor of the new OCS Stand, opened in 2005, it houses up to 70
journalists – all heirs of the pioneers of the Cricket Reporting Agency.

Murray Hedgcock is a London-based Australian journalist who came to England in 1953, hoping to see Australia retain the Ashes. They did not – but he has remained
loyal and optimistic at every succeeding series.

Additional research: Christopher Lane

BEHIND THE SCENES AT WISDEN

R
OBERT
W
INDER

Wisden has endured bombing and bankruptcy – but the Almanack never missed a year. Not all its heroes have been cricketers, however, and not all have been honoured or
thanked. Here are five men who, inadvertently or otherwise, helped shape
Wisden
.

When John Wisden died in 1884, single and childless,
Henry Luff
acquired his company. As well as publishing the Almanack, John Wisden & Co were primarily a
sports-equipment retailer, with a shop near Leicester Square: its spirit lives on in the red tiling above a fast-food joint in Cranbourn Street. But without Luff, the book might have folded. There
was keen competition (from, among others, James Lillywhite), and the 1886 edition nearly failed to come out altogether, eventually emerging in December with a sheepish apology: “Messrs John
Wisden & Co desire to express their regret at the delay which has occurred in its publication – a circumstance due to the long-continued indisposition of the Compiler [the editor, George
West].” Only decades later, when
Wisden
had grown into a collector’s item, would the importance of not skipping an edition become clear: Luff’s determination had helped
preserve the continuity on which the value of the whole set depended.

Luff strengthened the sports company by making it a manufacturer, and rejuvenated the book by handing it to a new generation. The Pardon brothers ran the Cricket Reporting Agency, which placed
journalists at matches to submit copy to newspapers. They were responding to the same technical advances that had played midwife to
Wisden
itself: wireless telegraphy and industrial-age
printing. In 1887, Charles Pardon became editor; his brother Sydney, younger by five and a half years, took over in 1891, and remained until 1925. In availing himself of this fresh blood, Luff
– who died in 1910 – placed the Almanack in the hands of a dynasty that turned it into an institution.

Charles Pardon
edited only four editions, but his third – in 1889 – launched a feature that would become an essential part of the Almanack’s
appeal. The Cricketers of the Year was inspired by another new technology (photography), and Pardon included medallion portraits of “Six Great Bowlers”, provided by prominent
photographers E. Hawkins & Company of Brighton.
Wisden
went on to make an annual award to the season’s leading players, later prompting Sydney Pardon to declare that this was
“proving so acceptable... there is no likelihood of the Almanack ever again being published without one”.

This showed that
Wisden
was not only a careful keeper of scores and records, and a stern Victorian preacher when it came to Laws and etiquette, but a wholehearted celebrant of
individual feats. This may have cut across the classic ideology of team spirit, but in reality it was a central part of cricket’s fabric. The quality of the images meant that “the faces
will be easily recognised” – no small matter at a time when cricket followers only rarely glimpsed their heroes. Sydney Pardon would go on to be the grandest editor of them all (for 35
years), but Charles’s innovation has been a
Wisden
hallmark ever since – a little touch of Oscar in the spring.

When in 1938 John Wisden & Co appointed Whitaker’s – owners of another famous almanack – as publishers of
Wisden
,
Haddon
Whitaker
took charge. Along with
Wisden’s
own editor, Wilfrid Brookes, he instigated a thorough overhaul, introducing many elements – such as the yellow cover and the
wood engraving by Eric Ravilious – that would become permanent. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Brookes resigned, and Whitaker became editor. As during the previous war, there was
little cricket to describe; inevitably, the main event was an expanded Obituary. And against a background of strict paper rationing, wartime sales shrank to barely 4,000 a year.

On December 30, 1940, the Whitaker’s office near St Paul’s was destroyed in the worst night of the Blitz. Yet somehow
Wisden
, as per the motto of the time, kept calm and
carried on. In 1943, Whitaker appointed Hubert Preston, a long-time
Wisden
aide, as editor for the 1944 edition, and thus the Almanack entered a new era. It was the start, too, of a second
Wisden
dynasty: his son Norman took over in 1952 and edited the book until his death in 1980. But if it hadn’t been for Haddon Whitaker, they might never have got the chance. With
pleasing modesty, Whitaker later referred to himself as an “interloper” among the distinguished line of cricket reporters who came before and after.

As the chief engineer of the Co-operative Wholesale Society’s retail empire,
Ken Medlock
was cut from a different cloth. In 1960, he was elected to the
main board. A keen club cricketer for Birch Vale in the Peak District, he was surprised to see on the agenda of his debut board meeting in Manchester a proposal to dissolve John Wisden & Co,
which the Co-op had bought out of receivership in 1943. Even though he was the new boy on the team, Medlock took a deep breath. “We must be out of our minds,” he said.
“Don’t you realise we are talking about liquidating the most famous name in cricket?”