Cricket's Historians

186 The World of Cricket of patient research, and told with considerable narrative skill.” In the case of Rosenwater’s book on England v Australia, Barker wrote the descriptive passages for each Test, but the overwhelming part of the book is statistical. Rosenwater undertook a major piece of research in discovering the second innings batting order for each match – commonplace now, but never previously published in any of the numerous volumes which had featured the detailed Test Match scorecards. At the time the book appeared Wisden of the day did not give such data for the matches which it printed. In complete contrast to The World of Cricket was The Story of Cricket by Vera Southgate in the “Ladybird” series for children. As superficial as one would expect for a juvenile item, one should not underestimate its influence in propagating, to a generation of children, myths such as the ‘popping hole’ and the female invention of round-arm bowling. In 1902, the History of Cambridge University Cricket had been published, with W.J.Ford as author (see Chapter 6); sixty years later a volume on Oxford University Cricket, in the same depth, finally made its appearance. The author was Geoffrey Bolton, who had been born in London in July 1893, educated at Repton and University College, Oxford. He served in France and Italy in the First World War, after which he became a Prep School master and eventually a headmaster, retiring in 1960. A slow left arm bowler, he failed to get into the XI at either Repton or Oxford, but played cricket for Sussex Martlets (being President from 1950 to 1964), Cryptics and Repton Pilgrims. Bolton died in Cuckfield, Sussex in April 1964. He had written and published a modest 16 page history of Sussex Martlets in 1956, but his book on Oxford, with 374 pages, was much more ambitious. The detailed score of each University match is printed and the first-class averages in all Oxford matches on a season by season basis. Each season has a two page review. There is a chapter on Oxford cricket prior to the first University match – Ford published the scores of all major Cambridge games, going back in 1821 – but Bolton only gives