Cricket's Historians

148 Mainly County Histories and Overseas Annuals year – Denzil Batchelor on C.B.Fry, Philip Lindsay on Don Bradman and John Arlott on M.W.Tate. The publishers advertised A.C.MacLaren by Neville Cardus, Hedley Verity by D.R.Jardine and W.G.Grace by Clifford Bax. The first two titles never appeared but in 1952, Bax’s W.G.Grace was issued as well as Oliver Warner on Frank Woolley. Curiously Epworth Press published in an identical format in the same year, Hedley Verity by Sam Davis. At the present time the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians is revisiting the same format, but tackling players not so well remembered. Meynell died in 1989. The mention of Warner as a subject in the above series requires a comment that he was still an active writer himself after the Second World War and in 1950 Harrap published Warner’s Gentlemen v Players 1806- 1950 . This was to remain the standard reference work on that historic series of matches. All the match scores are printed with brief comments. The book also incorporates the Australians v Gentlemen and Australians v Players contests. There is a good statistical section compiled by Roy Webber and the volume runs to 516 pages – the previous book covering the matches had been by Ashley-Cooper in 1900. The other major Warner title had been an updated version of Ashley- Cooper’s Lord’s History. Warner had this published in 1946. The first 170 pages cover Lord’s up to the First World War and are little more than a summary of Ashley-Cooper’s work. The period of 1919 to 1945 occupies 120 pages and therefore provides a useful history of that time. There are 52 plates, 12 of which are in colour. Warner was appointed President of M.C.C. in 1950-51 and died in Sussex in 1963. He had remained connected with The Cricketer magazine to the end of his life. Another author who continued to work after the Second World War was E.L.Roberts, but Roy Webber’s statistical output and profile were soon placing Roberts in the shade. He had ceased to be in charge of the Records section in the Wisden Almanack after the 1940 edition, and his book Cricket in England 1894-1939 issued in 1946 has been noted previously. The following year came Test Match Cavalcade 1877-1946 , which gave potted