Cricket's Historians

160 More County Histories and The Cricket Society grows would be soon superseded by Ledbroke’s history. Roy Genders played county cricket briefly for Derbyshire (his native county), Worcestershire and Somerset. Educated at King’s School, Ely he went up to Cambridge, but failed to be awarded a blue. Like Chignell, Genders served on the Worcestershire Committee. His book, coming out just a year after Chignell’s tome, was more entertaining. About half the book comprises essays on individual Worcestershire players and Genders is at his best with these. In the same year, Genders’ most notable cricket book, League Cricket in England, was issued by Laurie. It is the first attempt at an overview of the subject as a whole. William Roy Genders, born in Dore, Derbyshire, in 1913, became an expert horticulturist, writing many articles and some books on the subject. Another of his interests was the collecting of cigarette and trade cards. He died in Worthing in September 1985. The author of the Glamorgan history was John (Jack) Hinds Morgan. Born in 1898, from 1921 he had reported on Glamorgan cricket for the Cricket Reporting Agency and then the Press Association, as well as the local newspapers. He was considered the leading sports journalist in South Wales. A keen local politician he had been made an Alderman and in 1957 was elected Lord Mayor of Cardiff. Morgan died in April 1978. With a much shorter time span to cover the Glamorgan history gives more detail and includes the full scores with reports of eleven memorable matches. The author is in the fortunate position of having watched the county from its first first-class match and having known the players Prittie’s book on Middlesex is 50 pages longer than that for Glamorgan or Worcestershire and indeed substantially larger than Home Gordon’s one on Sussex. Prittie provides reasonably long essays on the most famous cricketers, such as Warner, Hendren, Compton and Bill Edrich, but little if anything on the lesser lights. He begins with the formation of the present County Club and makes no reference at all to the ground problems Middlesex had before they finally settled at Lord’s. The Convoy County series, which gave readers a useful first taste of their county’s cricket past, ceased, after having published the seven titles