Robert William Brooke (born 5 May 1940) is an English

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

writer who has published over 20 books about the game, including those referred to in the bibliography below. Born in

Solihull Solihull (, or ) is a market town and the administrative centre of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in West Midlands County, England. The town had a population of 126,577 at the 2021 Census. Solihull is situated on the River Blythe i ...

, Brooke attended school in

Dorridge Dorridge is a large village in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in the West Midlands (county), England. Historically part of the historic counties of England, historic county of Warwickshire, the village is encompassed within the electoral wa ...

and Yardley Grammar School in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

. He is a longtime

Warwickshire CCC Warwickshire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Warwickshire. Its T20 team is called the Birmingham Bears. Founde ...

member who served as the club's honorary

librarian A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time, ...

for several years. He has also been active in MCC,

the Cricket Society The Cricket Society is a charitable organisation founded in 1945 as the Society of Cricket Statisticians at Great Scotland Yard, London. It has grown steadily to be the largest body of its kind in the cricket world. The Cricket Society now has mor ...

and the

Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) was founded in England in 1973 for the purpose of researching and collating information about the history and statistics of cricket. Originally called the Association of Cricket Stati ...

(ACS), of which he was the co-founder in 1973. Mr Brooke was the ACS chairman from 1973 to 1979 and was the editor of the ACS journal, the ''Cricket Statistician'' from 1973 to 1985. As of 2003, he was the

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

and obituarist of ''

The Cricketer ''The Cricketer'' is a monthly English cricket magazine providing writing and photography from international, county and club cricket. The magazine was founded in 1921 by Sir Pelham Warner, an ex-England captain turned cricket writer. Warner e ...

''. Some of his articles for that publication can be found on ''

Cricinfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

'' within their player profiles.Article from ''The Times''
/ref>

Bibliography

*''Who's Who of English First Class Cricket, 1945-84'', Collins Willow, 1985, *''Cricket Firsts'' (with Peter Matthews),

Guinness World Records Limited ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

, 1988, *''Who's Who of Warwickshire County Cricket Club'' (with David Goodyear), Robert Hale Ltd, 1989, *''A Who's Who of Worcestershire County Cricket Club'' (with David Goodyear), Robert Hale, 1990, *''A History of the County Cricket Championship'', Gullane Children's Books, 1991, *''Who's Who of Lancashire County Cricket Club, 1865-1990'' (with David Goodyear), Breedon Books, 1991, *''Warwickshire County Cricket Club First Class Records, 1894-1993'', Limlow Books Ltd, 1994, *''Warwickshire County Cricket Club (100 Greats)'',

NPI Media Group NPI Media Group was a publishing group set up by UK publisher Alan Sutton. The group's business was acquired by The History Press in 2007, amid a number of authors being owed royalty payments by the NPI Media Group. The History Press, backed b ...

, 2001, *''Middlesex CCC (100 Greats)'', NPI Media Group, 2003, * '' John Edward Shilton's Book'', Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, 1984.

Notes

Sources

* Brooke, R. (1984) ''John Edward Shilton's Book'', Association of Cricket Statisticians, Haughton Mill, Nottinghamshire. {{DEFAULTSORT:Brooke, Robert 1940 births Living people Cricket historians and writers Cricket statisticians