Cricket's Historians

264 A Spate of County Histories by David Green and Warwickshire by Jack Bannister. Both authors were well-known county cricketers who had taken up journalism. Helmwas then taken over by A. & C.Black. Three more county titles were issued by the new publishers –Nottinghamshire by PeterWynne-Thomas, Leicestershire by Dennis Lambert andNorthamptonshire byMatthewEngel and Andrew Radd. Engel, born June 1951, had been the cricket correspondent for The Guardian and in 1985 won the Sports Journalist of the Year Award. He took over as editor of the Wisden Almanack in 1993. Andrew Radd, Engel’s junior by a decade, was and is a local broadcaster and journalist with the Northampton Chronicle & Echo and the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph , where his love for local club cricket often comes to the fore. The Northamptonshire book was the final one to be printed – yet again a publisher had failed to complete a ‘county’ series. The principal reason for the failure was not the poor financial return, but that other publishers saw an opportunity and jumped into county histories as the series progressed. Partridge commissioned FromThe Sea End , author Christopher Lee, From the Stretford End , author Brian Bearshaw and From Sammy to Jimmy author Peter Roebuck. Those books covered Sussex, Lancashire and Somerset. Astonishingly, Kingswood commissioned Eric Midwinter’s Red Roses Crest The Caps (a third Lancashire history), while Crowood had Derek Hodgson, a local journalist, writing a rival to Woodhouse’s Yorkshire history. Readers were spoilt for choice and the market was flooded. The book by Christopher Lee is boldly sub-titled ‘The Official History of Sussex County Cricket Club’. The author could be praised for explaining the background before the actual County Club was formed, but seven chapters (more than a third of the main text of the book) is surely over- egging the cake? These early chapters are a general waffle through early cricket history – nicely presented, but in a volume of this length not necessary. The record section begins with a list of Sussex villages and the dates when cricket was first recorded – John Goulstone published such a list in 1972, but the author clearly is blissfully unaware of this. Like the curate’s egg the book is good in parts. Christopher Lee was the B.B.C.