The Minor Counties Championship 1901

10 The meeting confirmed that the umpires were to be paid £3-10s a match inclusive, with the payment to be made by the county on whose ground the game was played, and the method for allocating umpires would be the same as that which operated for the first-class counties. The 25 umpires selected from those nominated were: R Barber J Gregory H Shaw C E Bartram W Hearne A Stockwin D Bookless R Humphrey J J Tuck T C Brown T Morley W T Westell A Buswell C Powell W A Woof W Cherry J Relf S Wrigley W Copeland J Rogers J Yeadon H Coulson R Rogers F Gladwin G T Rye All these umpires stood in at least one match during the season, and the following 8 are also known to have stood: W Attwell, G Bean, W Brown, R H Ingleby, A Pike, H Richardson, A Rylott and J E West. THE BOOK The Match Scores The scores are presented in the same format as used in the publications covering the six earlier years, with the methodology and layout remaining unchanged. For the 1900 season scorebooks had existed for just three counties - Durham, Hertfordshire and Yorkshire 2nd XI. For 1901, these 3 teams were joined by scorebooks for Devon - just recently rediscovered - and for Staffordshire. The increased number of scorebooks should not disguise the fact that newspapers have remained the main source of information, and once again well over one hundred have been consulted in researching the scores for this book. Where an obvious newspaper is not listed amongst the sources at the foot of a match score, this is likely to be because it has not been possible to gain access to the volume at the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, either due to its fragile condition, or because it is not held either there or at the relevant county library or record office. Again, the competition continued to receive very limited attention in Cricket , the leading magazine for the sport at the time. It gave no full scores of any Championship match. Missing Details There are no instances in the match scores where runs batting add incorrectly. However, there is one case where the runs bowling in the match scores do not add correctly. It is Match 38 - Wiltshire v Devon at Trowbridge, where in the Wiltshire second innings the Devon runs bowling are 6 in excess. Despite the existence of the Devon scorebook, it has not been possible to resolve the discrepancy.