What is the highest number of runs a player has scored in Test matches without ever being dismissed? Did P. G. Wodehouse name Bertie Wooster's valet, Jeeves, after a county cricketer? Why is Ashley Giles known as the 'King of Spain'? Who scored the 1,000th century in Test cricket? No one knew and loved, cricket quite like Bill Frindall - his passion and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the game was evident as soon as he took over scoring for Test Match Special in 1966, a post he held until his death in 2009. In 2001, he began offering his cricket expertise through a column on the Test Match Special website, 'Ask Bearders'. Fans would write in with the most difficult and arcane questions possible, hoping to 'Stump the Bearded Wonder'. They never did. Ask Bearders collects the best of the Q & As from Bill's popular column, offering cricket fans a one-stop compendium of the most challenging bits of history and statistics the game has to offer. It is a unique testament to the perfection Bill sought in his study of the game, and an essential book for any serious cricket fan

The doyen of cricket scorers -- Angus Fraser * The Independent *
There are other very competent practitioners of the essential art of cricket scoring, but [Bill] was indubitably the most illustrious, indefatigable and industrious of them all -- Christopher Martin Jenkins * The Times *

Bill Frindall was born in Epsom, Surrey, on the first day of the Timeless Test at Durban. Dubbed `The Bearded Wonder' by the late Brian Johnston, Frindall was the longest serving member of Radio 4's Test Match Special commentary team. Making his debut in 1966, he scored 377 Test matches, including all 246 played in England. He was appointed an MBE in 2004 for his services to cricket and to broadcasting, and was the editor of the Playfair Cricket Annual for 23 years, from 1986 until his death in January 2009.