James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1876

24 according to one account of his death, died from the consequences of a blow received from a cricket hall. As it is, I do not know to whom the poem refers, for there is not a copy of it in any of the important libraries in a very safe one, as he was more than sixty-one at the time of the publication of the book. In 1790, the first Cricketer’s Guide, the production, nominally, of Thomas Boxall, burst suddenly upon the wold , the modest and humble parent of innumerable children, Boxall was a Surrey man, who played also for Kent and Hampshire, and even for England against Surrey, thus going beyond Southerton in the days when county qualifications did not exist. He laid his field much as it would he laid at present for fairly paced under­ hand howling, say something between Mr. I. D. Walker and Mr. C. I. Thornton ; hut he puts his umpire, in the one plate that the book possesses, in a very odd, and indood, impossible place, the error being, as I suppose, the fault of the engraver. He is at least half-a-dozen yards behind the batting crease on the leg side, and close up to the line between the wicket­ keeper and long-stop, and could no more judge a run out than if he stood at Jong-leg. BoxalPs book is, on the whole, a very sensible one, and dis­ cusses, with discretion and skill, the question of how far a ball bowled at a given pace ought to pitch from the wicket, a matter which varies somewhat according to the batsman’s style of play. He fully understood the difference between forward and backward play, of which I find the first definitions in his book. On the whole, the book is better than one would expect, both as to style and matter, and must have been written by a man of a good deal of practical and literary ability, though it is very probable that Thomas Boxall lent to it little more than his name, and that some press-hack of the day did the work. In 181b William Lambert published his “ Instructions and Rules for Play­ ing the noble game of Cricket,” hut 1 need say hut little about this book, which is a flagrant and deliberate piracy of Box all’s. Whether Lambert had personally anything to do with the fraud it is hard to say, but he was far too ignorant to have written or even dictated anything of the kind himself. He was a man of very had character, and probably gave the use of his name for money or money’s worth to some unscrupulous speculator. His book is bad enough, but there are worse ones of later date. In is23 Henry Bentley, a professional bowler employed by the Marylebone Club for many years, published a book of scores from 1780 to 1822, which was of some interest till Frederick Lillvwhites “ Cricket Scores,” superseded it. Bentley was a fair cricketer of long experience, and was reckoned to be a first-rate umpire, but his book lias no kind of literary merit, and also differs ve ry widely from the records kept at Lord’s of the same matches. Who is right, when these discrepancies exist, it is now impossible to say. Next on the list in time, but very different in quality, is John Nyrcn’s Cricketers* Guide, 1833, really written, as I am told, for Ldo know it of my own knowledge, by that excellent hard-working author Mr. Charles Cowdon Claike, to whom the public is much more in debt than it knows. This is really a beautiful little book redolent ot the soil, full of the crisp flavour of old cricket fields, and evidently taken down from the very lips of the reputed author, provincialisms and all. Ihe old players (who as a rule lived very 1