Bill Frindall

William Howard Frindall MBE (March 3, 1939, Epsom, Surrey) is a British cricket scorer and statistician who is familiar to cricket followers from his appearances on the BBC's radio programme Test Match Special. 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.

Frindall was educated at Reigate Grammar School and studied architecture at the Kingston School of Art before serving in National Service for six and a half years in the RAF. Frindall took over the scoring for Test Match Special on 2nd June 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.

Frindall is an enthusiastic cricketer himself and his fast bowling prowess has been on display at cricket grounds around the country (especially in charity matches) for many years.

He 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.

Frindall is the president of British Blind Sport, a charity co-ordinating sport for the blind and partially sighted.cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/3798807.stm|title=Bearded Wonder honoured|last=Thompson|first=Anna|coauthors=Brett, Oliver|date=2004-06-11|publisher=BBC Sport|accessdate=2008-05-26]

Opinions

Frindall is known for staunchly defending his beliefs about his subject. When the ACS attempted to revise the status of many 19th century and pre-war matches, which would have produced statistics that are different from the conventional, Frindall was among those who objected to their "rewriting of history". As a result, some ACS statistics are different to those in Wisden, which is regarded as the standard. For example, the ACS has awarded Jack Hobbs 199 hundreds (as recorded on Cricinfo) while Wisden, the generally accepted standard, gives him his "traditional" total of 197.

More recently, when the ICC decided to award 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, Frindall, in common with many statisticians and historians, disputed the ruling. As a result, Playfair and other publications to which he supplies statistics will not classify those matches as official Tests or LOIs.

Honours and awards

In 1998, Frindall was awarded the honorary Degree of Doctor of Technology by Staffordshire University for his contribution to statistics. [cite web|url=http://www.staffs.ac.uk/about_us/about_the_university/doctors/1986-2005/|title=Honorary Doctors 1986-2005|publisher=Staffordshire University|accessdate=2008-05-26] He was appointed an MBE for services to cricket and broadcasting in the 2004 summer Honours list. His beard was awarded Beard of the year by the Beard Liberation Front.

Publications

In June 2006, his autobiography, 'Bearders - My Life in Cricket', was published by Orion. Other works include the "Wisden Book of Test Cricket", the "Playfair Cricket Annual", which he has edited since 1986, the "Wisden Book of Cricket Records", the "Guinness Book of Cricket - Facts and Feats" and the 'Cricket records' section of the "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack", which he wrote for several years.

References

External links

* [http://www.beardedwonder.co.uk/index.html Bill Frindall's website]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tms/ask_bearders/ Frindall's column in BBC]