by Mayukh Ghosh

"From my experience, county cricket is full of material that hasn't been properly recorded. Believe me, there are lots of people out there who would love it."
Written by Stephen Chalke.
Addressed to Stephen Fay.

Chalke's book with Bomber Wells has been published and is doing well.
Fay has just become the editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly.
He is unsure about how good Chalke's proposal is but, after a long think about it, he asks Chalke to submit a piece about resumption of cricket after World War II.
Out of Chalke's comfort zone with much to be taken from books and newspapers but Fay likes the end product.
He asks him to do two more.
Left to choose his own subjects, Chalke chooses a special innings by Don Wilson ( 29 not out with an arm in plaster) and an extraordinary spell of bowling by Leicestershire's Charles Palmer, against the mighty Surrey side of the 1950s.

"You can do one every month from now on. And when you've done one hundred, you can put them in a book."
They call the column 'Only Yesterday'.
It takes Chalke close to eight years to reach hundred. All of them can be found in 'The Way It Was'.

Stephen Fay's love for cricket began as soon as cricket resumed after the war.The likes of Don Bradman and Denis Compton caught his fancy.
When he became a journalist he began to cover a wide range of topics. Cricket was not one of them.
He was the deputy editor at Independent on Sunday. And then 20 years at Sunday Times.
His main areas of focus were theatre and finance.

In the early 1990s, he began writing on cricket, the game he had loved since childhood.
He edited Wisden Cricket Monthly for three years, retiring on his 65th birthday. It coincided with the last issue of the magazine.

Two years later, he wrote a book on Tom Graveney's year as a MCC President.
And a decade later he began preparing a book on Arlott and Swanton.
He had David Kynaston as his co-author.
The book came out in 2018 and I, by then a quite desperate seeker of signed books, thought of getting in touch with him, via publishers Bloomsbury.
The response came in a flash.
I was also keen to get the story behind his book.

I could find out in no time that he was a pretty generous man.
He shared with me the pieces he had written for The Cricketer and Wisden.
And promised to write a short piece for me, narrating why and how they'd written the book.

But what about the signed copy? Will Bloomsbury be of any help?
Apparently, no.
He said he'd arrange one himself, get it signed by David Kynaston and send it to me.
A month down the line and he'd done it all.

By that time the reviews were flowing in. Most of them were very positive. I mentioned about David Frith's glowing review. He was curious. It was an unpublished one. I shared it with him.
The review ends this way: "....what we have here is a salute, a lament, a masterpiece. If the cricket book awards people vote for this one, for once they will have got it right."
It pleased him.
"That is praise indeed."

He insisted that I should not pay him anything for the book. Not even the postage.
I was in touch with him for over a year.
Even the slightest of delays in responding always meant that there was a profuse apology from his side.
It sometimes made it a touch awkward for me.

Stephen Fay was a good man.
He knew how bitterly it ended for David Frith at the WCM. When he became editor he invited Frith to write a delayed farewell piece for the magazine.
Frith does remember him and the rapport he had with him: "He was a good man. He was likable. I'll miss him."

Stephen Fay was 81 when he passed away earlier this week.