Cricket's Historians

The Pioneers of Cricket’s History and Statistics ball reference so that in Pycroft it reads ‘For Club-Ball we believe to be the name which usually stood for Cricket in the thirteenth century’. Pycroft then boasts that he has discovered a literary reference to cricket 25 years earlier than Strutt’s first quote (D’Urfey in 1710 or 1719 depending on the edition), namely Edward Phillips in 1685, ‘Would my eyes had been beaten out of my head with a cricket-ball the day before I saw thee!’ Just as Strutt had the incorrect date for his initial reference, so did Pycroft, the year should have been 1658, not 1685. These incorrect dates have caused successive ‘historians’ great confusion, almost ever since. Phillips’ piece was published by N.Brooks under the title The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence . One assumes the muddled dating 1685 for 1658 was, initially, a printing error. Pycroft goes on to seek out from Clark ‘Handyn and Handoute’ and ‘Cat and Dog’ as games related to or akin to cricket; as well as ‘creag’ in the reign of Edward the First in 1300 – ‘Creag and cricket, therefore, being presumed identical.’ In broad terms those are the facts Pycroft noted in the first edition of his book. In later editions, more historical data were included – the book was issued in nine editions prior to Pycroft’s death, which occurred in Brighton in 1895. From the present-day viewpoint the most valuable section of Pycroft’s book is his record of the game from the 1780s, which provides a first- hand account of cricket. As has been noted, Pycroft interviewed many old cricketers, including, most notably, William Beldham (1766-1862) of Surrey and Hambledon. The best edition of Pycroft, for the student, is that of 1922, which is edited with very extensive notes, by F.S.Ashley-Cooper. Several local cricket clubs published the scores of their matches in book form about this time, most notably Ripon (1837), Audley End (1844) and Lansdown (1852). In addition some Public Schools issued match score books – Winchester (1838) and Rugby (1842) being among the earliest. However both these categories simply issued the bare scores with very 21