Cricket's Historians

280 Biographies Multiply Low, a Scot, was a ‘proper’ journalist and war correspondent in, inter alia, Vietnam and Kosovo, before writing a number of historical novels, set in the Viking era. Rae has been a poet and broadcaster, for example presenting ‘Poetry Please’ on B.B.C. Radio 4, and at the time of writing has a share in a provincial theatre company. In contrast to these two biographies, the third book, by Joe R. Webber, is 1,102 pages in length and A4 in page size. The book stays strictly to the facts – the statistical facts. The author attempted, and probably succeeded, to trace every match in which Grace was involved. Contemporary newspapers were scoured, and after a detailed list of every game, comes a multitude of statistical tabling. For Webber the book was a one-off – he had not been particularly interested in cricket statistics before the project and after publication by the ACS, he resigned from the Association to pursue other fields of study. In Chapter 18 it was noted that the publisher, Spellmount, started a series of county books giving biographies of the most notable players. In 2000 another publisher, Tempus, launched a similar series, ‘One Hundred Greats’. Each book contained hundred players from a given county, with usually a single page biography and photograph. By and large these biographies did little more than (in the case of deceased players) repeat their obituaries. Obviously the ‘top’ hundred players of a county are the players whose details are already known and in a few hundred words, the authors could have little room for any more obscure facts they might unearth. Therefore any criticism of the books centred purely on the selection of the players included. The quality clearly depended on the individual author, but unlike Spellmount, Tempus endeavoured to find a new author for each title: The list, in chronological order reads: Glamorgan (A.K.Hignell), Yorkshire (M.Pope & P.E.Dyson), Worcestershire (L.W.Hatton), Leicestershire (D.A.Lambert), Sussex (JohnWallace), Gloucestershire (A.K.Hignell), Hampshire (N.Jenkinson), Surrey (J.R.Lodge), Warwickshire (R.Brooke), Middlesex (R.Brooke), Nottinghamshire (J.Ledbetter),Durham(M.Appleby), Kent (D.Robertson & H.Milton), Lancashire (K.Hayhurst), Northants (A.Radd), Somerset