Cricket's Historians

140 Mainly County Histories and Overseas Annuals ‘Village Cricket’ must baffle every reader. It amounts to little more than the author’s memories of his own cricket at that level. (There was a similar chapter in Horace Hutchinson’s Country Life book of 1903, but by C.F.Wood, rather than Hutchinson). Like Altham, Parker ignores overseas cricket, except when English touring sides venture abroad. There are three chapters based on match series at Lord’s, namely Gentlemen v Players, Oxford v Cambridge and Eton v Harrow, not perhaps so unusual, until one realises that the Eton v Harrow chapter is almost as long as the other two combined! Perhaps he was influenced by Taylor’s Annals of Lord’s, which has a similar bias? The more one dissects the book, the more it seems to be broadly based, not on Altham’s work, but on Charles Box’s History of 1877. One then remembers that Parker was born in 1870. If these comments are rather caustic, there are some good pieces which deserve mention. The chapters relating to the early development of the game are well written. The 16 th century document relating to John Derrick and Guildford is reproduced, as is a page fromDavies’ scorebook of 1832. There is a useful chapter on single wicket matches. The closing chapter, giving short histories of some 40 well-known English clubs, provides an extension to H.E.Powell-Jones’ 1929 book Famous Cricket Clubs, itself being taken from a series of articles in The Graphic . One could however debate whether histories of local English clubs warrant a place in The History of Cricket . The sixty illustrations are well chosen and a worthwhile contribution to the whole. The book required a ruthless editor to weed out the irrelevant pieces, cut down the Eton v Harrow type sections and incorporate some meaningful essays on overseas affairs. Unfortunately the official editor was also the author. Eric Parker, whilst his chapters gathered into one volume a collection of historical facts, did not add to the erudite historian’s knowledge of the game’s development, but one individual county history published just a year before most certainly did; this was Eric Snow’s A History of Leicestershire Cricket . Edward Eric Snow was born in Leicester in 1910. He spent most of his life in his native county, unlike his two more famous