Cricket's Historians

Ashley-Cooper, Pentelow and their Contemporaries died in November 1914 aged 62. A rather similar project was being undertaken by another amateur cricket statistician whose first work was issued around the same time. He was destined to bombard the public with statistics and historical notes for half a century, but unfortunately his work did not achieve the accuracy of Coxhead and Pentelow, let alone Ashley-Cooper. Home Seton Charles Montagu Gordon, born in Brighton in September 1871, was educated at Eton, but did not obtain a place in the XI – in fact he played no cricket of any consequence. He became Sir Home Gordon, when he succeeded his father as the 12 th Baronet in 1906. He contributed occasional articles to Cricket from the end of the 1880s and from 1900 wrote frequently for the Badminton Magazine . However he confessed that he was fascinated by cricket statistics. After some 12 years of endeavour, Home Gordon published in 1902 Cricket Form at a Glance 1878-1902 . The two main statistical tables are set out landscape, with, after the player’s name, year of birth and team, a column for every season from 1878 to 1901 and the runs scored with average each season, plus a career total in the final column, or wickets taken, average for bowlers. Inclusion qualifications are that a player batted, or bowled, in a minimum of two seasons. By this system 1,158 batsmen are detailed. The book also includes catches and stumpings for all wicket-keepers who played in three or more seasons. Other tables analyse the performances of players for and against the Australian touring teams. In all the statistical sections occupy 314 pages, in addition to a Preface by Lord Hawke and the author’s Introduction. The author states that the original data has been gleaned principally from the scores published in Wisden , but ‘fully ninety-five per cent of all the averages have been entirely reworked and sought out by myself ’. It is unfortunate that Gordon goes on to state that he has excluded four or five matches previously considered as ‘first-class’ from his statistics, but fails to name the matches. The hours spent in the compilation of this dense mass of figures must have been enormous, but the end result is very patchy. By not including every player, Gordon could not balance his figures, which makes checking very difficult. 82