Cricket's Historians

Chapter 20 Historians Dig Deeper The previous chapter may give the impression that the ACSmonopolized the publication of historical and statistical books during the last decade or so, but in fact there were plenty of other worthwhile books on aspects of cricket history, if not so many on statistics now that the internet covered that branch so thoroughly. In 2004 however the Sussex Record Society published Tim McCann’s book Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century . This work expanded on the volume published by the Squires some fifty years before. The principal content of the book contains Sussex cricket references from 1702 to 1800, but pre-1700 references are dealt with in the lengthy Introduction. Sussex being such an early county in cricketing terms the book contains many new references and does give the source of those references. Timothy J. McCann is the Assistant County Archivist at West Sussex Record Office and had previously researched into the archives of the Dukes of Richmond, who were very heavily involved in promoting 18 th century cricket. However, many of the historical items published in the British Isles in recent years centred on aspects which are too narrow to command a place in a book such as this – a typical example is Foreign And Fantastic Field Sport: Cricket in County Tipperary by Patrick Bracken, published in 2004. Regrettably readers will have to search the latest Bibliography Post Padwick: The Gibbs Extension of Padwick’s Bibliography: 1990-2006 to find items such as the Tipperary example, rather than check the present book. Stephen Gibbs, based in Australia, had published a bibliography of Don 287