Cricket's Historians

Bowen Bows Out all classes of cricket, not first-class alone. Those who have attempted to chronicle the history of a segment of this vast whole will be the first to salute Mr Bowen’s gifts.” The review concludes: “This is a hard hitting book in addition to its supreme value as a work of statistical and sociological history. It provides food for thought as well as entries for one’s record book. Mr Bowen disclaims the literary qualities of Altham’s history. But there can be no better model for a historian of Indian cricket than a combination of Altham and Bowen.” Irving Rosenwater reviewed Bowen’s book for The Cricketer and was not complimentary, save in his opinion on the Index and the idea of the Chronology . Rosenwater listed a stream of factual errors. What is rather irritating in the circumstances is that Rosenwater was also given the job of reviewing the book for The Journal of The Cricket Society . In this review, Rosenwater ends with: “This book needed a keen editorial hand before it was let loose on the market. H.S.Altham’s work still stands unchallenged.” Rather hypocritical when one considers that Rosenwater was presumably the ‘keen editorial hand’ on The World of Cricket . Turning to Bowen’s acknowledgements in his volume, three names are singled out, R.L.Arrowsmith, John Goulstone (see Chapter 12) and C.L.R.James. Robert Langford Arrowsmith was born in Canterbury in April 1906. Educated at Charterhouse and Oriel, Oxford, he was in the XI at school as a left-hand batsman, but failed to get a blue at Oxford. He was a master at Lancing for ten years, before moving back to Charterhouse, where he stayed for the rest of his teaching career. His adult cricket was for M.C.C., Free Foresters, I Zingari, Charterhouse Friars and a number of similar wandering teams. He died in October 1988. Arrowsmith had letters published in The Cricketer from the 1940s onwards, often on biographical 201