Cricket's Historians

Mainly County Histories and Overseas Annuals book begins with a “Short History of Woman’s Cricket” of some 60 pages, which remained the most accessible work on female cricket until 1976, when two more international cricketers, Rachel Heyhoe-Flint and Netta Rheinberg, brought out Fair Play: the Story of Women’s Cricket . In 1951 the well-known novelist, Laurence Meynell had published Famous Cricket Grounds. This concentrated on the English Test grounds, though noting a few others. It featured notable cricketers and their exploits at various venues and descriptions of famous matches played on the grounds described. John Arlott made some wry comments on the defects in the work – was it pure coincidence that a much slimmer, but more reliable book, Homes of Sport : Cricket was issued the following year, written by Norman Yardley in conjunction with J.M.Kilburn? In contrast to Meynell’s rather superficial effort the Kilburn-Yardley book described most of the grounds currently in use in first-class county cricket. It gave detailed descriptions of the facilities on each ground, with ground plans and photographs of all the county headquarters venues. It was a fresh concept and a fine guide to the general spectator. It would be more than thirty years before an updated version superseded this 1952 book. The plans of the grounds had in fact first been printed in the 1950 edition of Wisden , the editor stating that they had been included to assist readers who listened to wireless broadcasts from the specific ground. Laurence Walter Meynell was born in Wolverhampton in 1899, educated at St Edmund’s College, Ware and after serving in the H.A.C. he became a schoolmaster, then an estate agent and finally earned enough to become a full time author. His only other cricket book was a short biography of Pelham Warner, also published in 1951. Warner was the subject chosen by the publishers, Phoenix House, of a series entitled ‘Cricketing Lives’. Although Meynell states that almost all the information for the book came from interviews he had with his subject, Warner had written so many books, including his autobiography that it was a difficult task for Meynell to bring much that was new. Having said that, the book, within the 20,000 words limit, is a delightful essay. The publishers selected equally competent writers for the other three books in the series issued that first 147