Cricket's Historians

Mainly County Histories and Overseas Annuals brothers, C.P. (later Lord) Snow and Philip Snow. It is possibly heretical even to suggest that Eric’s History will be studied and treasured long after the eleven volume saga Strangers and Brothers by Lord Snow has been forgotten, but Eric Snow set a new standard for county cricket histories The first chapter of Eric’s book treats cricket in the county up to 1824 and contains a wealth of information, hitherto unrecorded in cricket books, which the author gleaned from a detailed study of local Leicester newspapers. He has also researched the biographies of many personalities who do not feature in Haygarth’s Scores & Biographies . Snow fills almost a hundred pages before he reaches the creation of the present Leicestershire County Cricket Club in 1879. Thereafter the book follows Leicestershire season by season with fresh biographies of many of the lesser known players – rather in the style of Ashley-Cooper’s Nottinghamshire History , but with a lighter touch. Snow subsequently issued a second volume, taking the County Club’s history up to 1977. He served on the Leicestershire Committee for 30 years and guarded the Club’s archives for 40 years. Snow died in Evington, Leicester in 1998. There could not be a greater contrast between two books on related subjects than Snow’s Leicestershire history and A History of Worcestershire County Cricket Club 1844-1950 by the Rev W.R.Chignell. Born in Worcester in 1909 and educated at King’s School, Worcester, Wilfred Roland Chignell was a slow left arm bowler, who was talented enough to have played in the Bradford League in 1934 for Lightcliffe, where he was serving as a curate. As Chaplain to the Parachute Regiment during the Second World War, he flew with the gliders into the fateful conflict at Arnhem. From 1952 to 1981 he was editor and principal statistician of the Worcestershire C.C.C. Year Book. He was a Vice- President of Worcestershire from the 1960s and also served a term as President from 1978 to 1980. Chignell’s History , with 443 pages, is longer than Snow’s, but contains absolutely nothing fresh. It is a very dull plod through Worcestershire cricket, almost match by match, with the match descriptions often taken verbatim from Wisden. There are no biographies of players and no research 141