Cricket's Historians

The Influence of W.G.Grace also struggled to publish anything worthwhile prior to the First World War – one appeared for a single year – 1907. It has previously been mentioned that the progressive success of W.G.Grace seems to have pushed the national annuals into the beginnings of ‘Record Sections’. The Champion himself inspired two ghosted autobiographies by William Methven Brownlee. A Scotsman, Brownlee moved to Bristol, where he established a flourishing business as a wine merchant. He was also a cricket enthusiast – he joined the Gloucestershire County Cricket Club Committee in 1896, but his books on W.G.Grace appeared earlier, in 1887 and 1891. It is the latter which is of importance to historians-statisticians. The final 70 or so pages, Chapter XII, titled ‘Records and Curiosities’ are the most valuable and detailed set of records for cricket as a whole (as opposed toDe Lugo’s Surrey records for example) yet printed. They commence with the results of all the ‘first-class’ inter- county matches from 1870 to 1890, followed by results of Gentlemen v Players matches and the career figures for the leading cricketers in those games. The players touring for England and Australia with summary results of ‘Test Matches’, though not labelled as such are printed. A brief section gives major batting and bowling feats, then the season-by-season batting and bowling figures in ‘first-class’ matches for the leading players, between ten and twenty in each list in each year. There are career records split into two decades, 1871 to 1880 and 1881 to 1890. No one is directly credited with this record section, though apart from Brownlee, C.P.Green of Malvern, Rev R.S.Holmes of Wakefield, Thomas Padwick of Redhill and Frederick Gale of Mitcham are thanked for their assistance. Of those Holmes is the most likely suspect – he will be treated in a later chapter. The main sports reporting agency in Yorkshire in the 1880s was founded by George Townrow Groves and based in Sheffield. Groves was the editor of one of the most peculiar of cricket annuals, Wm Whittam’s Modern Cricket and Other Sports Some idea of its eccentricities can be gauged by a note in the front of the book and by the Preface which follows. The note states: Copyists of any part of the book, without quoting the 57