Cricket's Historians

The Pioneers of Cricket’s History and Statistics the game is recorded in the Gentleman’s Magazine of that year, a piece of information not given in Nyren’s book, also the England second innings score is shown as 72, rather than the total of 70 given by Nyren. Clark also copies the 1777 Hambledon v England scorecard from Nyren; from then on Clark prints potted scores of sundry matches continuing to the date of publication. The book continues with sections on How to Play and on the Laws. In 1851WilliamBolland was the author of Cricket Notes . The first chapter entitled ‘Early History’ has 11 pages devoted to the pre-Hambledon period and describes Tip Cat as one of cricket’s ancestors – more or less taking the detail from Tyas’s 1838 book. In fact one of the few pieces of new ‘information’ introduced by Bolland is that the word ‘cricket’ comes from ‘cross wicket’ (i.e. the batsmen running between the wickets). The rest of the detail is derived from Strutt or Nyren. Bolland, who played cricket for M.C.C., was created the Perpetual President of I Zingari on the foundation of that club. Since their inception in the closing years of the 17 th century, newspapers have been a prime source of cricketing information. For those who do not have access to early 18 th century papers, J.S.Penny’s book Cricketing References in Norwich Newspapers 1701 to 1800 which simply prints word- for-word all the cricketing notices in the Norwich papers provides an excellent feel for the cricket news that Norfolk readers received prior to 1801 – in fact Penny failed to find any cricket notices before 1729. Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century compiled by Timothy McCann and published in 2004 is a similar work. James D. Coldham, in his essay on ‘Some Early Cricket Reporters’ (published in The Journal of The Cricket Society 1981-84 Vol 10 No 2 to Vol 11 No4), states that Pierce Egan (1772-1849) was the first ‘sports reporter’, working from 1816 for the Weekly Dispatch . However The Sporting Magazine , first published in 1792, contained cricketing notes occasionally. So too did Annals of Sporting from 1822 and The New Sporting Magazine from 1831. Were these simply sent in by readers, or were some contributed by journalists? John Wheble of Warwick Lane, near St Paul’s 17