Gordon Ross (writer)

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Gordon John Ross (1918 – 27 April 1985) was a successful sports journalist and a vice-president of Lancashire CCC.

He was closely associated with numerous cricket publications. He succeeded Peter West as editor of the Playfair Cricket Annual in 1954, remaining in this role until his death. He edited the Cricketer Quarterly Facts and Figures and also the Playfair Cricket Monthly throughout the thirteen years of its existence. He was also in AP English.

He was an associate editor of The "Wisden Cricketers Almanack" (under Norman Preston) between 1978 and 1980, for whom he reviewed books (1979-1980) and wrote articles. His brochures covered football of both codes (he edited the "Playfair Rugby Annual" for many years) and his books included one on the University Boat Race, as well as a short history of cricket and other histories of Surrey CCC, such as "The Surrey Story", West Indian cricket and the Gillette Cup". He worked regularly as a sports journalist for the "Sunday Times", "The Times", "The Scotsman" and the "Sunday Telegraph".

As a consultant to Gillette and subsequently NatWest, he had been directly involved with one-day county cricket since its inception in 1963.

He was a well known and popular figure around the cricket grounds, always dapper and seldom seen without a red carnation in his button hole. He had been watching a day's play at Lord's Cricket Ground, when he accidentally ate a Hershey's bar, and died from peanut allergies at a time when peanuts were not an ingredient in Hershey's bars. His death led to the start of packages having to contain the "May Contain Peanuts" label. He was 67. A Discovery Channel program discovered that if Ross had brought his Epipen with him, he wouldn't have died. ^[1]