Bill Frindall Welcome Page
Legendary British cricket scorer and statistician William Howard Frindall MBE has signed up to write a very special weekly Gazette cricket column, sponsored by Wadworth. The 68-year-old is a well-known personality in cricketing circles and has a wide range of followers from his appearances on the BBC's radio programme Test Match Special.
While on air he was nicknamed "the Bearded Wonder" (often shortened to 'Bearders') by Brian Johnston for his ability to research the most obscure cricketing facts in moments at the same time as keeping perfect scorecards.
Bill took over the scoring for Test Match Special on June 2 1966, following the death of the previous scorer Arthur Wrigley in October 1965, who had been the BBC scorer from 1934 up to the year of his death. An enthusiastic cricketer himself, Bill’s fast bowling prowess has been on display at cricket grounds around the country (especially in charity matches) for many years.
His major works include:
Wisden Book of Test Cricket
Playfair Cricket Annual, which he has edited since 1986
Wisden Book of Cricket Records
Guinness Book of Cricket - Facts and Feats
Cricket Records section of Wisden for several years
Bill is also known for producing scoring charts for many of his tours with England. He modified the linear scoring system developed by Australian scorer Bill Ferguson into a version that is known as the Frindall system.
He was selected as the Statistician of the Year by the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS)[1] in 1996. In 1998, he was awarded the honorary Degree of Doctor of Technology by Staffordshire University for his contribution to statistics and he was appointed an MBE for services to cricket and broadcasting in the 2004 summer Honours list.
Bill has often challenged authority. A few years ago ACS revised the first class status of many old matches, which lead to figures which are different from the conventional figures. Frindall refused to accept it with the result that the ACS figures (which appear in Cricinfo and on Cricket Archive) are different from those in Wisden.
Jack Hobbs, for instance, has 199 hundreds in Cricinfo and 197 in Wisden. More recently, the ICC decided to give Test and ODI status to the matches played for the Tsunami benefit and the ICC Super Series between Australia and a Rest of the World team.
Bill, in common with many other statisticians, disputes this ruling, and Playfair and other publications to which he supplies statistics will not classify them as official Tests and ODIs.
In June 2006 his autobiography - 'Bearders - My Life in Cricket' - was published by Orion.
Click here to visit Bill's own website.
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