Cricket's Historians

Chapter 4 Test Match status is defined and Overseas Publications multiply English cricket followers must have been delighted when a publisher made the decision to launch a rival to Cricket . For too long that magazine had held a monopoly, but in May 1892 The Cricket Field was issued. Edited by A.W.Browne, it was published by The Pastime Office, 11- 12, Rose St, Paternoster Sq, London E.C. The first article in the initial edition was by W.Methven Brownlee, the subject, inevitably, W.G.Grace. The Pastime Office published weekly journals on Football and on Lawn Tennis, as well as covering the other popular sports. A.W.Browne was not a journalist specialising in cricket and therefore could not compare with his rival editor, C.W.Alcock. The principal cricket man on the new magazine was Walter Ambrose Bettesworth. Born in 1856, Bettesworth was educated at Ardingly and then stayed at the school as a master. He had a brilliant school cricketing career and that success saw him graduate to the Sussex County side. In between scholastic duties he played 21 games for the county, spread over six seasons. In 1883 he moved to Blair Lodge School in Scotland and hit two double centuries in club cricket in Scotland. Bettesworth decided to retire from schoolmastering and plunge into journalism. He was a very talented artist notably with pen and ink sketches. His first book relating to cricket, The Royal Road to Cricket was published in 1891 and cashed in on the vogue for comical productions – C.W.Alcock comments: ‘The sketches which accompany the letter-press are full of humour and of a quaint conceit’. Ashley-Cooper was later to say that Bettesworth was ‘a 59