Cricket's Historians

Some Sumptuous Volumes and County Histories Andrew Lang, a poet, novelist, prolific essayist and literary critic, had written the Introduction to Richard Daft’s Kings of Cricket. In his essay for Imperial Cricket, Lang flirts with the notions of some early types of cricket being played in both Scotland and Ireland, but he firmly dismisses the theory that cricket was brought over to England from France at the time of Joan of Arc. Lang plumps squarely for the Guildford reference of 1598 as the first definite mention of the game. Lang had twice before written on cricket’s history, in the English Illustrated Magazine (Vol 1, 1884), and in the introductory chapter to the 1888 volume on Cricket in the Badminton Library. Unlike Box’s history, the book does not have chapters on each major county, although Warner provides a chapter on Lord’s and the M.C.C. and John Shuter and H.D.G.Leveson Gower write on The Oval & The Surrey County C.C. Neither chapter adds anything to what has been written before – the details of Surrey cricket and of the Oval had been dealt with in the volume mentioned in the previous chapter. Where the book covers a totally new field is in cricket outside the British Isles. Australia, South Africa and New Zealand are reviewed, as one might expect, but also Egypt and Sudan, West Africa, East Africa, Ceylon, Hong Kong, British Malaya, Samoa, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, each chapter written by someone familiar with the specific area or colony. The chapters are illustrated with photographs of grounds in the places mentioned. There is an excellent index, the work of Ashley-Cooper. Pelham Warner thanks Ashley-Cooper for effectively editing the final proofs, whilst the former was in Australia with the 1911-12 M.C.C. touring side. The book would be overshadowed as a reference work in the 1920s by Altham’s history, but Imperial Cricket provides a much larger canvas than that work was to cover. The magazine Country Life had published in its series ‘Library of Sport’, a 454 page work simply entitled Cricket. The Editor is Horace Gordon Hutchinson (1859-1932), whose fame rests with golf. He captained Oxford v Cambridge, then won various golfing trophies as well as writing extensively on the subject. He is regarded as the Father of Golf Instruction. 85