Cricket's Historians

146 Mainly County Histories and Overseas Annuals the Laws which were printed on the borders of early handkerchiefs are included in this thorough piece of research. Rowan Scrope Rait Kerr was born in 1891; educated at Rugby he was in the XI in 1908, 1909 and 1910. He then went to R.M.A., Woolwich and joined the Royal Engineers. He played a great deal of cricket whilst in the Army and in India represented the Europeans in first-class matches. In 1925 he wrote a well-researched book, A History of Royal Engineers Cricket 1862-1924 . In 1937 he had been appointed Secretary of M.C.C., but rejoined the Army at the outbreak of the Second World War. He retired from M.C.C. in 1952 and died in April 1961. His daughter was then in charge of the Lord’s Library. G.D.Martineau was mentioned in connexion with the history of the Laws. Between 1946 and 1957, Martineau wrote four books on various aspects of cricket history. He also toured the country giving lectures on the subject. Gerard Durani Martineau was born in Lahore in 1897 and educated at Charterhouse and R.M.C., Sandhurst. He served as an officer in the Royal Sussex Regiment from 1915 to 1923, then retired to take up school teaching. From 1924 he had poems published in The Cricketer and from the mid-1930s many articles, some fictitious and others on historical subjects. His poems also appeared in Punch, The Bystander, The Spectator, Country Life and The Morning Post . He retired from school teaching in 1949. Martineau’s obituary included in the 1977 Wisden Almanack (he died after a long illness in Lyme Regis in 1976) sums up his cricketing prose: … ‘in general his books were not works of much original research. Pleasantly written, they were ideally calculated to arouse the interest of the novice and spur him on to try for himself the masterpieces of Nyren and Pycroft.’ The four titles written by Martineau are The Field is Full of Shades (1946), Bat, Ball, Wicket and All (1950), They Made Cricket (1956) and The Valiant Stumper (1957). 1949 saw the publication of Maiden Over by Nancy Joy, a member of the 1948-9 England team in Australia. Primarily a diary of that tour, the