Cricket's Historians

The Pioneers of Cricket’s History and Statistics sale of cards. Through the 1850s and into the 1860s, Fred’s Guide (as the annual was commonly called) had no serious competitors. The format remained little altered, though a section devoted to Public Schools and local clubs expanded. Fred’s father, William Lillywhite died in 1854, ‘He expired very suddenly (having smoked a pipe the day before), of cholera at the sports shop off Caledonian Road in London, which he kept with his sons, John and Frederick.’ William Lillywhite’s career in first-class matches continued until the year prior to his death, when, at the age of 61, he briefly took part in the Sussex v England match Lord’s arranged for his benefit – he bowled 11 overs before retiring from the match. His career with Sussex had begun in 1825 and in 1850 and 1851 he had taken part in a few games for Middlesex. In 1859, Fred Lillywhite accompanied George Parr and his team on the first overseas tour by England cricketers – to North America. Lillywhite reportedly drove Parr to distraction with the problems of transporting the famous printing press from venue to venue, but the end product was the first ‘tour’ book, The English Cricketers Trip to Canada and The United States , with a lithograph of Fred Lillywhite peering out of his printing tent on the title page. It gave an account of the travel problems as well as the matches and the detailed scores. At the same time as this was being issued, Fred Lillywhite had in preparation perhaps the most ambitious cricket publishing project ever attempted. It was to bemulti-volume work containing the detailed scores of every ‘major’ cricket match, combined with biographies of every cricketer of note. The work of collecting all this information was undertaken by Arthur Haygarth. He, it would appear, had become involved with Fred Lillywhite in 1852-53 when the latter published a simple book, entitled The Public School Matches . This contained nothing, apart from a brief introduction, but the scores of matches played between Eton, Harrow and Winchester – no averages, no list of players. After the seasons 1852, 1853, 1854 and 1855 the book appeared with the most recent games added. It then reappeared following the matches of 1860, 1863, 1866, 24