Martin Wilson was the Association’s Statistician and Historian of the Year for 2010, an award prompted by his immense contribution to the work of the ACS 18th-century group. He trawled through contemporary newspapers and other publications with painstaking thoroughness and scholarly attention to detail to find invaluable new information and identify innumerable corrections to long-accepted scores. Above all, he located the full score of a ‘great’ match between Surrey and Hampshire, which had been lost for over 200 years since its original newspaper publication in 1778. The fruits of Martin’s hard work were published in the recent ACS book, Great Cricket Matches 1772-1800.
He has also collaborated on the comprehensive collection of 18th-century references to cricket compiled by the 2009 Statistician of the Year, Ian Maun, and is now taking over as publisher for that project.
Martin Wilson has previously explored the history of cricket in North America down to 1820 in Dawn’s Early Light, unearthing many previously unknown references showing that, so far from being the marginal pastime that some had suggested, cricket was deeply rooted in contemporary American life. In another book, First Cricket In…, he listed the earliest cricket references in each English county, together with key early references in parts of the world as diverse as Estonia, Mexico and St Helena. It is believed that he was the first to discover the earliest references to cricket in the West Indies (1757) and Ceylon (1806).
In the present, Martin is a dedicated follower of Northamptonshire and a keen advocate of the newest form of the game, Twenty20.