Irving Rosenwater
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Irving Rosenwater (11 September 1932 - 30 January 2006) was an English researcher and statistician.
A dedicated cricket researcher, Irving Rosenwater was a unique character, which English cricket often produces, but does not always value as highly as it should.
He contributed much to the understanding of the game's history, concentrating on figures and facts. He was enthusiastic and amiable in his early years, but his perfectionist approach did not always please his contemporaries.
"Sir Donald Bradman - A Biography" (1978) was his outstanding achievement. It was the first major record of the great Australian cricketer and it was impressive for its sheer detail. He showed a considerable grasp of the Australia, in which Bradman grew up and flourished.
Irving Rosenwater was born of Polish immigrant stock in the East End of London in 1932 and he was educated at Parmiters' Grammar School, Bethnal Green. After deferred National Service in the RAMC, when his precision in administration brought him the offer of a permanent commission, he began contributing to domestic and overseas publications on cricket, including "The Cricketer", where his first sports reports appeared in 1955. He also compiled cricket crosswords for the magazine and was its assistant editor.
For a time, he compiled the records section of "Wisden Cricketer's Almanack". In 1961, he was the founder-editor of "The Cricket Society Journal" and a year later he wrote a learned introduction, with notes on individual reproductions, for a charming collection, "A Portfolio of Cricket Prints - A 19th Century Miscellany". Ralph Barker joined Rosenwater in 1969 to assemble "England v Australia", a compendium of Test cricket between the two countries.
His search for cricketing truth found an apparently ideal outlet in "The Cricketer Quarterly" (1963-1970), where he contributed to the game's most erudite periodical, until he fell out with its idiosyncratic founder Rowland Bowen.
When E.W. Swanton produced his substantial work, "The World of Cricket" in 1966, Rosenwater as assistant editor, proof read the 600,000 word - twice.
He was a meticulous scorer and he succeeded the first BBC television scorer, Roy Webber for a seven-year stint, but left in 1977 to join Kerry Packer's revolutionary World Series Cricket.
In later years,he concentrated on a series of monographs published by the dealer Christopher Saunders. These ranged from "500 Notable Cricket Quotations" and "Thomas Verity: Architect of Lord's Pavilion", to studies of notable collectors and researchers of the past.
At his death, he was planning a booklet reproducing modern ticket designs for Lord's matches by the graphic designer Jules Akel, to which he would contribute an introduction.
He had been an active member of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, the Cricket Society, the Cricket Memorabilia Society and the Marylebone Cricket Club.
A bachelor, he was survived by a sister.
