The Cricket Society is a charitable organisation founded in 1945 as the Society of Cricket Statisticians at Great Scotland Yard, London. It has grown steadily to be the largest body of its kind in the cricket world. The Cricket Society now has approaching 2000 members in the United Kingdom and the cricket playing countries of the world. Its current President is John Barclay.
The Wetherall Awards began in 1967 and presently several Awards are presented at the Society's Autumn Lunch, among them:-
The Cricket Society instigated an Annual Book of the Year Award in 1970 that now, in association with the MCC, hosts an Awards Evening in the Long Room at Lord's each spring.[1]
In 2020 the Society instituted the Howard Milton Award for Cricket Scholarship, which is given to an individual or institution that has contributed a significant body of work to the history of the game. Recent winners include Ramachandra Guha and Clem Seecharan.
Throughout the winter months, The Society holds monthly meetings, featuring famous names from cricket, for members and guests at diverse locations in Central London, usually the Union Jack Club or the Civil Service Club.
Through its charitable trust, it raises money to coach underprivileged children in the skills of cricket. They link up with various organisations such as the Arundel Castle Cricket Foundation to achieve these aims.
The Society has a cricket team which plays at a number of venues each season. It also holds monthly meetings for the members in London (as detailed above), Bath, Birmingham and Durham at which invited speakers address the audience. These activities are held to maintain an interest in cricket and both inform and entertain its members and guests through the off-season.
The Cricket Society publishes a journal, bi-annually and a regular news bulletin, 8 times per year, for its subscribed membership.
The Society commissioned E.W. Padwick to compile a comprehensive bibliography of cricket literature under the title A Bibliography of Cricket. The first edition, published in 1977 by the Library Association had 8,294 entries.[2] A revised edition, published in 1984, extended this to over 10,000 entries (ISBN 978-0853659020). A second volume, published in 1991 as Padwick's Bibliography of Cricket, Volume 2, was compiled by Stephen Eley and Peter Griffiths and covers works published between 1980 and 1990 (ISBN 978-0853655282).
The Cricket Society began naming a book of the year in 1970. Since 2009 the award has been made in partnership with MCC.[3] It carries a prize of £3000, which is presented at an awards evening each spring in the Long Room at Lord's.[4]
1• 1945-1946 F. A. Mackinnon, The Mackinnon of Mackinnon
2• 1947-1959 Hubert Preston
3• 1960-1961 H. S. Altham
4• 1961-1962 Lord Birkett
5• 1963-1968 A. A. Thomson
6• 1969-1973 Lt-Gen Sir Oliver Leese
7• 1974-1975 A. M. Crawley
8• 1976-1983 E. W. Swanton
9• 1983-1998 G. H. G. Doggart
10• 1998-2008 C. D. A. Martin-Jenkins
11• 2008-onwards J. R. T. Barclay
1• 1945-1946 A. Weigall
2• 1946-1947 Capt. J. A. Bayliss
3• 1947-1953 G. A. Copinger
4• 1953-1960 A. R. Whitaker
5• 1960-1965 Dr R. W. Cockshut
6• 1965-1966 L. E. S. Gutteridge
7• 1966-1983 C. C. W. Box-Grainger
8• 1983-1992 R. N. Haygarth
9• 1992-2003 D. Allsop
10• 2003-2008 W. R. Allen
11• 2008 I. R. Jackson
12• 2008-2012 D. E. Barnard
13•
2012-2021 N. Hancock [1]
14. 2023 to date P. M. Hardy