Cricket's Historians

Bowen Bows Out work is almost entirely speculative, rather than based on hard facts. John Ford, a lecturer in English history at the United States International University, wrote Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 published in 1972. Although this work adds nothing to the known cricketing data, Ford has worked largely from Bowen’s history and the standard reference books such as Buckley and Waghorn. He thereby builds a picture of cricket in the context of the general pattern of English life at the time. In Australia another academic, Professor John Mulvaney, researched a cricketing subject not previously investigated, the story of the 1868 Aborigines Tour to England, Cricket Walkabout . This was published for the centenary of the tour. As a result of its publication much new source material, including the original account books of the tour, came to light. A second edition under the joint authorship of Mulvaney and Rex Harcourt was issued in 1988 – almost double the length of the initial edition, with the number of plates increasing from 12 to 39. It proved the famous Warsopian edict, ‘never publish the first edition of an historical book’. Professor Mulvaney had specialised in studying the history of the Aborigines. He was Professor of Prehistory in the Faculty of Arts at the Australian National University, having originally graduated from Melbourne University. Rex Harcourt also graduated from Melbourne University and was involved in Civil Aviation until he retired in 1980 when he became the Research Librarian to Melbourne Cricket Club. In 1958, Roger Page published A History of Tasmanian Cricket . This broke new ground and remains the standard work on the subject. There are 28 illustrations, many not previously seen in publications. Finally, in South Africa, Stewart E.L.West and W.John Luker celebrated the centenary of the Western Province Cricket Club. Century of Newlands was published in 1965. The authors regret that due to costs, the original manuscript had to receive a number of cuts. 213