Cricket's Historians

The Formation of the Association of Cricket Statisticians 1977 – A Bibliography of Cricket compiled by E.W.Padwick. The idea of a cricket bibliography had been mooted in the earliest days of The Cricket Society. J.D.Coldham had begun the initial work on the project; J.P.Everitt of Chingford then continued, but progress was very slow. Geoffrey K.Whitelock, who had written brief bibliographies of various county clubs for The Cricketer in the 1950s, took charge of the project in 1957 and the work gained some momentum. He was succeeded in 1966 by Michael L.Pearce, who had joined The Cricket Society in 1961. Born in Margate in May 1930 he was educated at KCS, Wimbledon and was an actuary by profession. In 1970 the decision was made to employ the expertise of a professional librarian, E.W.‘Ted’ Padwick, Deputy Librarian of the Guildhall Library. His most important research was undertaken at the library of Geoffrey Copinger, but also using the libraries of Tony Woodhouse, Hal Cohen, AlanMcKay, Bob Jones and JimColdham, as well as the Lord’s Library and its librarian, Stephen Green. A second expanded edition appeared in 1982, which included many more publications from outside the British Isles. As a result the number of items included grew from 7,000 to 10,000. For those who want more detail on how the work on the bibliography progressed, Irving Rosenwater published a short treatise on the subject entitled The Padwick Bibliography – this was issued in 2002. Oneof cricket’smost long-running andcurious adventures began in1975. Designed to run to 26 volumes Hambledon’s Cricket Glory was researched and written by Ronald D.Knight. It tells the story of Hambledon village and its inhabitants, but centring on its famous cricketers. The individual volumes vary in quality and size. Not all the planned volumes were in fact issued. Those published were volumes 2 to 19, together with index volumes 26 to 28. Two books dealing with first-class counties were published in 1977. Volume Two of Eric Snow’s Leicestershire history followed very much the pattern of his first excellent work. Less ambitious than Snow’s book was L.F.Newnham’s Essex County Cricket 1876 to1975 . Running to 93 pages it is sub-titled ‘A Brief History’. Newnham’s pride and joy in his book is 227