Cricket's Historians

The Pioneers of Cricket’s History and Statistics 1867, and 1868. After the death of Fred Lillywhite in 1866, the title was adjusted to John Lillywhite’s Public School Matches . Arthur Haygarth was born in Hastings in 1825. He was educated at Harrow and appeared in the school eleven in 1842 and 1843. Haygarth played in first-class matches for M.C.C. from 1844 to 1861, as well as many of the principal matches at Lord’s and dozens of minor M.C.C. games. Haygarth had made a hobby out of collecting the detailed scores of past cricket matches and from the 1840s keeping his collection up to date as matches were played. The best description of the work possibly comes direct from the biography of Arthur Haygarth published under a Harrow Match of 1842 in the third volume of the great work entitled Frederick Lillywhite’s Cricket Scores and Biographies of Celebrated Cricketers : ‘Mr Haygarth is the entire compiler of this work (F.Lillywhite being the publisher), having been engaged, solely for his own amusement, several years in collecting and arranging scores of all good matches that could be procured. Has also added all the foot-notes and remarks, which are appended to the various contests throughout the book. The biographical notices of all famous cricketers (most of whom either had, or would soon have been forgotten, had not some account of them been transmitted to posterity through these pages) have also been written by him….To get materials for the work, he visited, in 1858, 1859 and 1860, many of the famous cricketing districts and grounds of former days, including Broadhalfpenny and Windmill Down at Hambledon, in Hampshire; the Vine at Sevenoaks; Penenden Heath, near Maidstone; Benenden; Bishops-Bourne, near Canterbury; Town Malling etc etc. All Clubs of note, also throughout the kingdom, have been applied to for their scorebooks; and, when obtained (most of them, however, not having been preserved), everything worth recording has been extracted… In addition, a very large 25