Cricket's Historians

Test Match status is defined and Overseas Publications multiply by the Daily Telegraph , later moving to The Times . His work was by no means confined to the sporting field; he wrote a biography of the well- known Victorian painter, Alma Tadema, another book on Guerilla Leaders of the World and was an authority on Ibsen – many of his articles and essays have a theatrical theme. For some time he was also music critic of the Morning Leader . In 1890 and 1891 Standing was an assistant editor on the magazine Cricket . His best remembered cricket book is Cricket of Today and Yesterday , which originally appeared as a part work in 1902, but was reissued in two volumes, when additional articles were added by notable contemporary cricketers. His biography of Ranjitsinhji was issued in 1903. Then after a long absence from cricket writing, Standing compiled Anglo-Australian Cricket 1862-1926 prior to the 1926 Ashes series. This book contains a separate chapter on each tour to and from Australia. Standing died in August 1931 – his death seems to have been ignored by the cricket press. HowdidC.W.Alcock react to the emergence of a creditableweekly rival to his magazine? Was it mere coincidence that the first article by R.S.Holmes was published in Cricket on February 25, 1892? Robert Stratten Holmes was born in London’s Oxford Street in 1850, his father having a retail bookshop in that thoroughfare. Holmes was ordained in 1874 and moved to Northampton; a useful all-round cricketer at club level, he made two appearances for Northamptonshire. He returned to London for a year in 1877, before moving to Liverpool, where he remained until 1890. It was not until he made his next move, to Yorkshire, that he began to write seriously about cricket. He was commissioned to produce a weekly cricket article for The Wakefield Express . With his father being in the book trade, Holmes had over the years built up a fairly comprehensive library of cricket books (he states in 1892 that he possessed 650 cricket titles, few collectors can have acquired more, at least until recent times) and these gave his articles a strong historical and statistical background. His first article for Cricket was an essay on George Parr. It must have impressed the editor, for two months later Holmes’ weekly column ‘Cricket Notches’ appeared for the first time. Although these notches deal with current events as the 62