Cricket's Historians

Chapter 3 The Influence of W.G.Grace By 1880, the cricket statistician was well catered for with regard to the detailed scores of the major matches played in England. In the previous chapter the principal national newspapers, magazines and annuals dealing with cricket, which were published during the 1870s were commented upon. With the aid of those plus Haygarth’s Scores & Biographies , a statistician could possess the scores of almost all matches of ‘first-class’ county standard, since such matches began to be published on a regular basis in the 1770s. The provincial press gave local county sides even more detailed coverage, but the compilation of ‘records’ had scarcely begun. Bell’s Life , as has been pointed out, began the publication of ‘averages’ for leading players and these were taken up by some annuals, notably in the early days, Bat’s Manual and Fred Lillywhite’s Guide , but taking, as an example, the Wisden Almanack of 1880, whilst very good match descriptions and full scores of major games are given (Wisden in 1870 began to include bowling analyses with each match score) the Almanack does not even print a table of ‘first-class’ averages, only providing separate averages for each county, plus M.C.C. There is no ‘Record Section’ at all and merely a straight list of individual hundreds, of any class – similar to lists which appear in the Lillywhite publications. It may be that Wisden followed Arthur Haygarth’s view that detailed ‘records’ were unnecessary and unwanted? One man however was to force the hands of cricket writers and embryo cricket statisticians and that was W.G.Grace. Within a few years of his 42