Cricket's Historians

96 Some Sumptuous Volumes and County Histories the founder’s son Charles Henry Richards (1850-1909). The latter’s daughters continued to publish scorecards at Trent Bridge into the 1930s. To further confuse the picture the firm also issued some Nottinghamshire Yearbooks with full detailed scores, as well as a pocket-size Notts Cricket Guide which continued except for the First World War period until 1932 – again Duncan Anderson’s book needs consulting. Across the Erewash, Walter J Piper, the cricket correspondent of the Derby Daily Telegraph , had published in 1897 The History of Derbyshire County Cricket Club . This gave the match scores of County matches from 1871 with reports plus a short introduction explaining how the County Club was formed. The year prior to the appearance of this history, Piper, in conjunction with the County cricketer and sometime captain, L.G.Wright, acted as editors and compilers of The Derbyshire Cricket Guide This gave a review of the past season and a feature on one or two county players, but its principal contents were details of local clubs and leagues. Levi George Wright (1862-1953) played 317 matches for Derbyshire between 1883 and 1907. Piper died in July 1940. Despite the enthusiasm of A.D.Taylor and A.J.Gaston, both of whom were noted in Chapter 3, plus a great patron in Lord Sheffield, Sussex never issued a history to rival those of Kent, Surrey or Yorkshire. The best that was managed was The History of Cricket in Sussex compiled by Gaston and dedicated to Lord Sheffield. It was a very modest 73 page book. Of those 73 pages, 17 are full page portraits of notable players. The great 18 th century development of Sussex cricket disappears in three pages and James Ireland, who resuscitated Sussex as a County team in the 1820s, and his Prince’s Ground are not even mentioned! However Ashley-Cooper did have two books on the county published. First came Sussex Cricket and Cricketers , which was a reprint of a series of articles he wrote for Cricket . It was limited to 30 copies. Second was Sussex Cricket Champions 1815-1901 , which gave statistical and other information on the Sussex players. In 1911, on the back of their maiden Championship success, Sydney Santall wrote a book History of Warwickshire Cricket . He had previously