The Cricket Statistician No 195

38 I Zingari with the assistance of George Freeman, now into his forties but still good enough to take twelve wickets in the match. In June there is the county of Brecknockshire taking on Radnorshire, a side that was bolstered by the presence of Frank Cobden, who achieved lasting fame with a hat-trick to end the 1870 Varsity match; his performances in this match were equally remarkable although on a lesser stage, and with the bat rather than the ball. On page 478 Worcestershire is recorded playing Shropshire; here Haygarth was unable to locate the full score and the detail is taken (by the editor) from ‘another source’, presumably the British Newspaper Archive. Similarly when MCC played Rutland (here referred to as ‘Rutlandshire’) at Oakham in July: the scorecard of the match was not given in any of the sporting papers, and is far from complete in Haygarth’s manuscript, Roger Heavens having taken the score from the MCC scorebook. This illustrates not only the wealth of material here which is not available elsewhere in book form, but also the effort that has gone into preparing Haygarth’s material for publication. Alongside these there are the curiosities: Haygarth made it his business to locate and record every individual score over 200, for example, every team score over 500, and other unusual incidents such as the double-tie match, of which there were five in 1885, all of them recorded in these pages. Wildlife intervenes on a couple of occasions: a rabbit stops play at Eastbourne in a match against MCC, and an unfortunate swallow meets its end when struck by the ball in a college match in Cambridge. And there is plenty of historical detail, such as the fact that the attendance for the Bank Holiday match at The Oval between Surrey and Nottinghamshire was the largest ever seen in London (though considerably smaller than that seen just a couple of years later). Or Haygarth’s sorrow at reporting that the Essex county ground at Brentwood was to be abandoned in favour of Leyton, a reminder that the debate about the use of outgrounds is nothing new. At the time of writing (June 2021), while most copies have been sold to subscribers, a small number remain for sale. Simply but handsomely bound to match the earlier volumes in the series (including those published during Haygarth’s lifetime), this is of course an expensive book, but the price reflects the costs incurred in production, not to mention the hundreds of hours Roger has spent in typesetting the volume. Back copies of other volumes in the series can also be obtained from the editor at the address above, including a special offer of the first two volumes for £20 the pair, including postage. It is hoped to produce further volumes in due course. As a companion to the main volume, Roger Heavens has once again produced an index, which is an essential tool for navigation and locating points of interest, not least because the style that Haygarth adopted, and which Roger has followed, was simply to record each match chronologically through the season with biographies inserted as players made their first appearance at Lord’s or otherwise distinguished themselves. I found it invaluable for the preparation of this review. Copies of the index (card covers, pp29) can be purchased separately for £5 from the editor at the above address. Richard Lawrence