Cricket's Historians

180 Rowland Bowen causes Ripples the widow of Roy Webber. In the first half of the 1960s, whilst the Playfair Cricket Monthly and The Cricketer fought out the contest for readership of the general cricketing public, the two new more serious magazines, The Journal of The Cricket Society and The Cricket Quarterly competed for the niche market of cricket statisticians and historians, Rosenwater v Bowen. Bowen brought on board a number of prominent cricket historians, several of whom have been previously noted. Eric Snow, the Leicestershire historian, serialised his history of Sir Julien Cahn’s Team (with statistics by Keith Warsop); Gerald Brodribb wrote about big hitting; the extensive cricketing notes left by G.B.Buckley were combed by Bowen and the edited results published; H.S.Scales, though now suffering ill-health, sent in pieces; J.D.Coldham and B.J.Wakley were other early supporters of the magazine who contributed essays. All these were well-known and respected figures in the small world of cricket historical research. There were some new faces. The most important contributor on early cricketing history was John Goulstone, who was born in 1940 and spent much of his time researching archives in Kent for early cricket references. In August 1959, in his first published correspondence to The Cricketer , the opening paragraph provides the sine qua non of what would become a lifetime of research into sports history: “I have been looking through the registers of gamekeeper deputations for Kent and a number of hitherto unknown facts concerning Kent cricketers have come to light, some of which may be of interest to those of your contributors who write on 18 th century cricket.” Goulstone’s initial piece in the Quarterly was to reveal the discovery of William Bedle, described at his death in 1768 as ‘the most expert cricket player in England’. Goulstone also wrote about the Dartford cricket side of the 1750s. Goulstone’s researches were to add great stature to Bowen’s magazine. Later Goulstone published his own magazine, as well as separate booklets on specific aspects of the game. The Cricket Quarterly also made a name for itself for its trenchant