by Mayukh Ghosh

“The number 4187 was always etched on my brain. It had a magical quality even as a child, which might say something about the child I was. The only comparable one was 365.”

Patrick Ferriday’s early interest in cricket came from his father and his tales of two contrasting left handers Phil Mead and Frank Woolley. And like most of the cricket obsessed youth in England back in those days he grew up watching county cricket.
“I had the good fortune to grow up watching county cricket when it really meant something and attracted players such as Mike Procter, Zaheer Abbas and Bishan Bedi. What a delight.”

Then, of course, there were the old Wisdens which his father possessed, and, for him, one name stood out.
“In every scorecard or old Wisden that my dad owned there was always that name, Wilfred Rhodes. If he wasn’t taking stacks of wickets, he was opening the batting for England and, most magical of all, he belonged to two (if not three) cricketing generations. There he was as a young man playing against Grace and Stoddart, and later, as a grandfather, still wheeling over his arm against Bradman and Hammond.”

He adds: “When I was a bit older I began to read about him. The books by Sidney Rogerson and AA Thomson were first, and then the others where he played only a bit-part.

When I was older still it occurred to me that he was truly one of the great cricketers in the history of the game – certainly the most prolific. He took more wickets than anyone, he is the only man to play Tests in five decades and he batted more often than anyone. That seemed the point where a full and detailed biography was needed.”

But the biography didn’t happen straightaway.
Instead, about fifteen years ago, reading EHD Sewell’s book about the 1912 Triangular tournament triggered in him the desire to write a book on that tournament. He thought there were many questions that were not answered in that book.
So, he began the research and unearthed fascinating facts.
Despite having a couple of willing publishers, he self-published it.
“ I had a couple of offers but I didn't feel that they really understood what I was doing and that I would be making too many compromises. I'm happy that I followed that line because I had complete control over appearance etc and the sales were as good as I could have expected.”

Before the Lights Went Out the beginning of Von Krumm Publishing. The book was well received, and he went on to write more books. He even published books written by others, most notably among them, David Frith.

The urge to write the definitive biography of Rhodes remained and now, after a decade, he has finally written that book on the 4187-man.
Rhodes was a big name who last played about 90 years ago. It was a daunting task.
But he was clear in his mind about why he wanted to write it.
“Partly it was the desire to record the magnificence of his achievements, also to eradicate some myths surrounding him. And then to place him within his time and as part of the age in which he lived. Who was Wilfred Rhodes rather than just a record of what he did.”

When we are talking about myth surrounding cricketers from that age one name can’t be far away and Ferriday was aware of that.
“There was the danger of taking a Cardusian caricature, although Cardus was much more careful with Rhodes than some of his other ‘creations’. There was the danger of believing everything you read when some of it is plainly poppycock. There is the problem of interpreting the class-driven London press and the defensively parochial Yorkshire press. But Rhodes was a solid presence.”

A mammoth task like this needs inputs from the contemporaries as well the descendants and Ferriday had no shortage of material from these sources.
“Then the joy of meeting his granddaughter, Margaret Garton, who was able to corroborate many of the deductions I had made. Likewise, Lyndsay Watkins, granddaughter of George Hirst, was able to confirm what I had surmised of the relationship between the two great Kirkheaton allrounders. And then there were the photographs that Margaret allowed me to use and the 1970 talk which David Frith recorded at Rhodes’ home in Bournemouth.

As to contemporaries, they all wrote about him. Fry, Pullin, Cardus and Kilburn. Beldam even photographed him, and Ernest Moore painted him. And fellow players had plenty to say, from Hobbs to Barnes to Hutton and onwards.”

There’s one little change though which the child who was fascinated by that number 4187 would never have approved.
“That magic figure of 4187 has now gone (although not in Wisden). In the 1990s the ACS decided to include four matches played in India in 1922/23 in first-class statistics. Cricket Archive followed suit. Wilfred Rhodes’ first-class tally rose to 4204, 20 years after his death. The old man would have had a good chuckle about that.”

The standard edition of the book is priced at £25.
There’s a limited edition at £75, signed by David Frith and Margaret Garton (Rhodes' granddaughter), plus an 80-minute CD of Frith's talk with Rhodes.
Both available here: https://www.vonkrummpublishing.co.uk/
If you ever buy a limited edition of a book which has a standard edition, I doubt there’ll be a better bet!