Cricket's Historians

Ashley-Cooper, Pentelow and their Contemporaries just happened to be looking through the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1744 and tripped over an advertisement in the July issue, offering Love’s epic poem, which in effect describes the match. A little more digging by Ashley- Cooper located the basic match details, but not the detailed score. Was Ashley-Cooper haphazardly scanning the 18 th century press, or perhaps he had previously read At The Sign of The Wicket , a book published in 1894 and written by E.B.V.Christian (who would become a long-term correspondent of Ashley-Cooper’s), in which Christian notes that Love’s poem was published in 1744? It is strange that when Waghorn’s book Cricket Scores &c appeared in 1899, Waghorn stated that he was unable to find the England v Kent match! If Ashley-Cooper and Waghorn were acquaintances, as would seem most likely by 1898, clearly Ashley-Cooper hadn’t specifically shared the information with the older man, and Waghorn had not seen the article in Cricket . A book of essays, The Lighter Side of Cricket , edited by Christian was published in 1898, with an essay by Ashley-Cooper, in which Ashley-Cooper still adheres to the year of 1746 for the match. One can therefore date his discovery of the true facts with some accuracy. In January 1900 the magazine Cricket began to print Ashley-Cooper’s newspaper researches covering the seasons 1741 to 1751 (subsequently reprinted as a pamphlet of 15 copies.) The data came from the British Museum newspaper collection, but the large majority of the references were not in Waghorn’s published work. Like Ashley-Cooper, E.B.V.Christian was a Surrey member (joining in 1889). Born in Deal in 1864 Edmund Brown Viney Christian was a qualified solicitor. His first piece in Cricket was published in 1891 and entitled ‘Cricket in the Law Courts’, which drew attention to several cricketing court cases not previously reported in the cricket press. The basic history section for the volume Surrey Cricket : Its History and Associations was written by Christian, but he frequently had cricket poems and essays of a less serious nature published, a typical title ‘WG as a Solar Myth’ gives of flavour of his work. In 1930 he published privately The Epic of The Oval . His Surrey membership lapsed in 1936 and he died at 75