Sad to hear of the passing of Robert Brooke, a Warwickshire man through and through, who wrote (amongst other books) The Fields Were Sudden Bare, the excellent biography of Frank Foster.
He had just reached his 85th birthday.

I bought that book from him directly as I couldn't find it anywhere. It is a good read and reflects the difference between todays pampered stars and players then who were so badly paid (Obviously this didn't affect Foster who had a private income) and treated very poorly if they were professionals. I would recommend it to anyone and the positive way Foster played the game, was a reason why Warwickshire became champions in 1911 much to the annoyance of the big 6 Yorkshire, Lancashire, Surrey, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire and Kent (Who refused to play us but then moaned after they finished 2nd) who thought they should have the monopoly on titles.

George Dobell has asked me if I will republish here the tribute to Robert that he has written for The Cricketer. He calls it his Robituary and says Robert would have wanted it published here, which is a nice thought. I envy George's ability to find exactly the right thing to say.
Anyway, here it is:

Robert Brooke: May 5 1940 to May 15, 2025.

Robert Brooke, the co-founder of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS), has died. He was 85.
Brooke, who authored more than 20 books and wrote a column for The Cricketer for 23 years, chaired the ACS from 1973 to 1979 and was librarian at Warwickshire CCC. He was, among many other things, statistician for The Cricketer and Warwickshire CCC.
Born in Solihull in May 1940, his original surname was Higgs. But he changed it by deed poll to Brooke - his mother’s maiden name - after falling out with his somewhat domineering father. He received his first Playfair Cricket Annual when he was eight - the first year of its publication - and his first Wisden at 16. From there he was hooked. Having excelled at maths at school, he was also blessed with a detective’s hunger for information and something close to a photographic memory. It combined to help him develop into one of the very best statisticians and historians the game has seen.
He ruffled feathers at times. He was never one to accept conventionally held ‘truths’, be they historical or statistical, and would be contemptuous of those whose research failed to live up to his exacting standards. He reexamined nearly all established statistics, invariably corrected them and immeasurably improved the accuracy of the craft.
His book reviews were also infamously acerbic. Once, after an admittedly sub-standard piece, I received a withering email from him reading only “I’m so sorry this is what you’ve become”. Another time, I asked for his help with an obituary. “He was the sort of man whose zimmer frame you wanted to kick from under him,” he replied.
But he was also wonderfully generous with his knowledge. And his ability to apply that knowledge, to make it relevant and interesting, really took his work to a different level. Several generations of journalists - including E.W Swanton, John Arlott, Christopher Martin-Jenkins and, at a more modest level, this one more than any - owed him plenty.
There was little money in cricket statistics in Robert’s early years - or later, he would no doubt point out - so he pursued numerous alternative careers. At first, he explored a future in law, working at Lincoln's Inn. When that failed to engage him, he worked as a postal clerk and then a postman. For a while, he enjoyed an existence of something akin to a hippy, living in Glastonbury and enjoying a relationship with a duchess. At around the same time, he slept overnight on the pitch at Hambledon in the hope of evoking the spirits at ‘the cradle of cricket’.
But Warwickshire - and Warwickshire CCC - always called him home. For many years, he sold newspapers at Dorridge Station. He also worked, for a time, as a private detective but admitted the lure of the pub rendered him suboptimal when it came to staking out the subjects of his work. Nobody who knew him will be at all surprised that the idea for the ACS (and it was, originally, an association for statisticians; the ‘historians’ bit was added later) was, in 1972, born in a pub.
His Milestones column, in The Cricketer, was astonishing for the level of research it evidenced in those pre-internet days, while he also edited the ACS quarterly The Cricket Statistician from 1973 to 1985. Most would concede it was not quite as interesting or relevant after he relinquished it. He was proud of his work for Wisden, too.
In 2011, he became the first individual to win the ACS’s Statistician of the Year for a second year (Philip Bailey had won it once as an individual and once as a partnership) having also been awarded it in 1989.
That 2011 award was in recognition of his final and perhaps best book: FR Foster - The Fields Were Sudden Bare. Robert always had something of a penchant for melancholy and the Foster story - of a brilliant young player who helped Warwickshire win the Championship, England win the Ashes and might have been the father of leg-theory but who lost everything to mental illness - appealed to his sense of melancholy. His book on John Shilton, who drank himself to death at the age of 37, was in a similar vein.
Away from cricket, he loved Wagner (Richard, not Neil) and only ventured overseas twice. Both times the destination was Russia - his father was a communist who encouraged an interest in the country - and both times he travelled by bus.
His later years were bedevilled by failing eyesight. It’s a cruel affliction for anyone, but for a writer and researcher like Robert, it felt particularly diminishing. He spent his final years in a pleasant care home in the Warwickshire countryside and, while his sight finally deserted him completely, his memory and humour never did. He admitted in the last few days he was ready to declare and almost immediately did so.
Late in life, he met a psychologist who suggested she may be able to help him get rid of the ferocious stutter that afflicted him throughout his life.
"I won't, if you don't mind," he replied. "I've grown rather fond of it.”
Many of us had.

Not sure if any posters on here knew him well enough to want to go; but funeral arrangements for Robert Brooke are:
The funeral will be held at 11am on Friday 13 June 2025 at:
The Robin Hood Crematorium
Streetsbrook Road
Shirley
Solihull
B90 3NL
The wake will be held at:
The Red Lion
1672 High Street
Knowle
Solihull
B93 0LY

Thanks for posting this. My Dad knew Bob through the ACS and did some research work for him the 80s. The Red Lion is just down the road so he may well stop by.

Update - the wake will now be held at:
Drum & Monkey
177 Four Ashes Road
Dorridge
Solihull
B93 8ND