Cricket's Historians

A Rival for The Cricketer History of Cricket for Allen & Unwin. Bailey squeezes everything prior to 1945 into 37 pages, before expanding through the years in which he played. The book is well-illustrated, but it really ought to have been his personal view of post-war cricket. Marlar does allow more space for the pre-1945 section, then moves into a sort of mini-encyclopedia, with brief scores of all Test Matches and a rather random selection of biographies. The short record section is compiled by C.J.Bartlett. The latter was born in Beckenham, Kent in July 1931 and educated at Christ’s Hospital. He spent his working life as a personnel executive with London Transport. Bartlett was a founding member of the ACS, having already been a member of The Cricket Society for twenty years. He served as a committee member of the ACS from 1995 to 2006 and was for sometime the editor in charge of the Famous Cricketers series, and author of several of those books. Invaluable as a researcher on many ACS projects, he spent long hours at Colindale Newspaper Library, or checking Births & Deaths Registers. The ACS Famous Cricketers series was launched in 1986 with Derek Lodge’s book on J.B.Hobbs, which laid out his first-class career innings- by-innings in addition to a short biography, though a similar work on Geoff Boycott compiled by Steven Sheen had appeared in 1982 published by Hamlyns. Lodge preceded Bartlett as the editor of the ACS series. Sheen was elected to the ACS Committee in 1995 and served until 2008, being Marketing Manager for much of that period. He was to compile three titles in the Famous Cricketers series – Tom Hayward, Stan McCabe and F.R.Spofforth. Both Marlar and Bailey’s books suffer from a disease which inflicts so many publications – faulty picture captions. The proof reading of these is always the last task before the book goes to print and the captions are the first words read by possible purchasers – always a critical goldmine for reviewers. Queen Anne Press commenced a new series in 1979 under the title ‘Wisden Cricket Library’. The first two books to appear were an anthology of pieces from Wisden between the years 1864 and 1900, selected by the musician Benny Green and the Wisden Book of Test Cricket 1876-77 239