Cricket's Historians

92 Some Sumptuous Volumes and County Histories moved from Cannon St to 353, The Strand and also went under the trade name of Cricket and Sports Publishers Ltd. In 1904, a year after the publication of Surrey Cricket : Its History and Associations came Yorkshire’s response, The History of Yorkshire County Cricket 1833-1903 by the Rev R.S.Holmes, with an Introduction by Lord Hawke. Hawke’s piece is relatively substantial, running to eight pages. The volume is 298 pages in length. The Rev R.S.Holmes had retired from his weekly column in Cricket in 1895, but he did continue to do some cricket work, in particular keeping the Record Section of the Yorkshire Yearbook up to date. However in this History, it was Ashley-Cooper who provided the season-by-season career records for Yorkshire players. Holmes seems to be more intrigued by the peripheries of Yorkshire cricket, rather than the successes and failures of the County Club itself – less than 50 pages are devoted to the ‘proper’ County Club seasons, from 1861 to date. Holmes had discovered some illuminating newspaper pieces on Tom Marsden, for example. There is a chapter on Yorkshire players appearing for England and on the AEE and their imitators in Yorkshire – he blunders when he states that no bowling analyses are available for the match in which George Wootton took all ten wickets – the analyses are in the Yorkshire scorebook, which Holmes claims to have checked. Holmes lists the winners, for example of the Heavy Woollen Challenge Cup, the season by season results of Yorkshire Seconds and even a list of Yorkshire bat manufacturers. Holmes therefore gives much information of value for present historians, but rather strays from the apparent principal aim of the History. It is appropriate here to introduce the author of the second volume on Yorkshire County Cricket, even though it did not appear until 1924. ‘Old Ebor’, otherwise known as Alfred William Pullin was born in July 1860. Leaving school he worked on various Yorkshire newspapers for about ten years and was then appointed chief cricket and rugby correspondent of the sister papers, The Yorkshire Post and The Yorkshire Evening Post . Pullin was not a Yorkshireman by birth, but came with his family to Wakefield from Wales, when his father took up a clerical post in the City. During the