Cricket's Historians

Some Sumptuous Volumes and County Histories cricket season, whilst with the Post , A.W.Pullin travelled with the Yorkshire side to all away matches and was regarded as a non-playing 12 th man. He wrote a series of essays for his newspaper on interviews he had over the years with former Yorkshire cricketers and these essays were re-issued in book form under the title Talks with Old Yorkshire Cricketers in 1898 – clearly this volume was of great assistance to Holmes when he came to write his history five years later. Almost as a follow-up to his Yorkshire book, Pullin had published in 1900, Talks with Old English Cricketers . This work is constantly mined by historians and quotes from it appear with great frequency, not always acknowledged. A brief note on Pullin’s opposite number in Lancashire. James Alfred Henry Catton, born in Greenwich in April 1860, was raised in Lancashire. A full time journalist, he worked briefly with the Nottingham Guardian , before joining the Manchester-based Athletic News . He was appointed Editor in 1895 and from 1903 to 1924 was also Editor of the Athletic News Cricket Annual under the pseudonym ‘Tityrus’. Like Pullin he travelled to away matches with the County team. Later he moved to London where he worked on Fleet Street newspapers, as well as being in charge of the Record Section for Wisden for four years from 1933. He died in London in August 1936. Lord Harris, the mentor of Kent cricket, was not to be outdone by the volumes which were published on Surrey and now Yorkshire cricket. In 1907 came The History of Kent Cricket published by Eyre & Spottiswoode with Lord Harris as the nominal editor. Harris notes: ‘But in chief I have to thank Mr Ashley-Cooper for a measure of assistance without which the work could not have been as interesting as I hope it may be found.’ Ashley-Cooper’s principal contribution was the compilation of ‘The Register of Kent County Cricketers 1729-1906’. This is 118 pages in length and quite outstanding – its basis is the biographical work published by Haygarth in Scores & Biographies , but Ashley-Cooper adds much data and each essay is self-contained. Several ‘family trees’ are also incorporated. Directly following this long chapter, Ashley-Cooper gives the season-by- season statistics for each player. One might have expected the chapter 93