Cricket's Historians

296 Historians Dig Deeper seemed too sure of its readership and its articles were aimed more at the general cricket enthusiast than the dedicated historian or statistician. At the time of writing the major historical project, which has been briefly noted earlier is From Commons to Lord’s , Ian Maun’s compilation of all known 18 th century references to cricket. Volume One was published by Roger Heavens in 2009 and covered the years 1700 to 1750, including many references not published in a cricket work before, a number of which come fromworks of fiction. The volume was edited by Roger Packham and Martin Wilson. Roger Packham has long been an expert on early cricket and worked with John Goulstone on projects in the 1980s. Importantly the book brought together the researches of Waghorn, Buckley and many others including the Sussex volume by McCann, noted at the beginning of this chapter. Volume Two, covering 1751 to 1770, was published in 2011. Ian Maun was born in 1949 and educated at RGS High Wycombe and Pembroke College, Cambridge. Formerly a schoolmaster by profession, he has in recent years been a language lecturer at Exeter University Books on cricket’s history as a whole continue to be published. In 2009, the broadcaster and former county cricketer, Simon Hughes, had his work And God Created Cricket published. It has been described as history strung together in an entertaining and conversational manner. Clearly no in-depth research was undertaken, but it serves as a gentle introduction to the game, with not too many blunders. A more serious tome issued in 2010 is The Cricketer’s Progress: From Meadowland to Mumbai by Eric Midwinter, which traces cricket’s history in tandem with the social and political happenings of each era. It is similar to Derek Birley’s social history, but without the factual errors of the latter. The ACS has continued to issue books of match scores in the last two years. Philip Bailey has acted as editor and compiler of the first- class match series which at the time of writing has reached 1924. John Bryant has acted as editor and compiler of a new series ACS Overseas First Class Annual , which publishes the scores of all first-class matches played