Cricket's Historians

The Influence of W.G.Grace the last 40 years.” A list then follows of the top 26 batsmen and top 26 bowlers who appeared in the series. Through the first few years of Cricket , similar items, usually less extensive, creep into the ‘Pavilion Gossip’ section, or correspondence column of the magazine. The first full-blown hardback book totally devoted to cricket statistical analysis, rather than simply publishing scorecards of games, was published in 1888 and featured the details of Surrey as a team and the county’s cricketers individually. In the same year another author dealt with the statistics of Nottinghamshire, but this included the detailed scores of the county’s matches and longish biographical sketches of the leading players. In 1888 the battle for the Championship crown was between those two county clubs. The Surrey book, entitled Surrey at the Wicket begins with a list of Surrey players from 1844 with, where known, place of birth, date of birth, height and seasons for Surrey. There follows on facing pages, each season’s potted scores and the seasonal averages. The results are then given in a summary table, with the record against each opponent, followed by the runs and wickets for and against Surrey season-by-season. Career Records for all the players, both batting and bowling, and sundry other tables complete the book, which is 159 pages in length. The Nottinghamshire book Fifty Years of Nottinghamshire Cricket is much more substantial, being 82 pages of biography plus 388 pages of scores and averages. The biographical section contains 62 cricketers and the more famous players have very detailed notes on their cricketing career – William Barnes’ piece, for example, runs to 12 pages with portrait. The scores up to 1869 are without bowling or match description, but from 1869 bowling and match description, plus seasonal averages are included. There are however no record tables as such, save those incorporated in some of the longer biographies. If the facts are presented in contrasting ways in these two works, then the authors are even more of a contrast. The Surrey book was privately printed for its author, in Madrid. Anthony Benitez De Lugo was the compiler’s name; born in 1858, he was educated at St George’s College from 1870 to 47