Cricket's Historians

The Pioneers of Cricket’s History and Statistics in that art. At the same time he was engrossed in the study of antiquities, publishing his first book on the subject in 1773. In semi-retirement Strutt began to research the origins of sports. The result was the appearance in 1801 of Glig-gamena angel deod, or The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England . Chapter 3 is ‘Games of Ball’ and one sub-section in that chapter relates to ball games in which an implement is used to strike the ball. The generic term Strutt uses for this sub-section is ‘club-ball’. This term is the one ‘cricket’ element for which Strutt is recalled today. Some misguided ‘historians’ misread Strutt, or half-read Strutt and claimed that ‘club-ball’ was a game in its own right. For the next 150 years, historians discuss ‘club-ball’ as if people prior to 1800 knocked on each other’s doors and said, ‘Come and have a game of club-ball’. Various lists of games, often prohibited, were published before 1800 and have been extensively quoted by sports historians. Not one contains ‘club-ball’. Strutt devotes a page or two to the origins of cricket, but pronounces it a ‘modern’ game. The first reference he could find appeared in a poem by Thomas D’Urfey, which Strutt dates as 1719; in fact the poem was reprinted in 1719 and first appeared in 1693. A second edition of Strutt’s book was issued in 1810, then an altered edition in 1831 and an updated and revised edition in 1903. It remained through the 19 th century the standard work on English sport as a whole. Statisticians were better served than historians. In 1823, Henry Bentley, a former cricketer at Lord’s and now an umpire, published a 374-page book containing matches played between 1786 and 1822. He then issued a 20-page booklet on matches played in the season of 1823 and in 1826 published scores for 1824 and 1825, this time of over 40 pages. Why he chose 1786 as his starting point is not explained, though Lord’s Cricket Ground was founded the following summer. Recent studies of Bentley’s principal book have confounded statisticians. Arthur Haygarth, writing in 1860, makes the point: ‘This work (Bentley’s Scores), however differs greatly from the scores kept by the Marylebone Club, and which 13