The Cricketers of My Time is a memoir of cricket, nominally written by the former Hambledon cricketer John Nyren about the players of the late 18th century, most of whom he knew personally. Nyren, who had no recognised literary skill, collaborated with the eminent Shakespearean scholar Charles Cowden Clarke to produce his work. It is believed that Cowden Clarke recorded Nyren's verbal reminiscences and so "ghosted" the text.
The work became a major source for the history and personalities of Georgian cricket and has also come to be regarded as the first classic in cricket's now rich literary history. Writing in 1957, John Arlott described it as "still the finest study of cricket and cricketers ever written".[1]
Publications
The Cricketers of My Time was first published in serial form by a weekly London newspaper called The Town in 1832. The following year, the series with some modifications appeared as the second part of an instructional book entitled The Young Cricketer's Tutor, which was also the title of the book's first part. There was a third part called A Few Memoranda Respecting the Progress of Cricket and that is generally referred to as the Memoranda.[2] The first edition of the full book was published by Effingham Wilson of the Royal Exchange, London in June 1833, and was reviewed by the Rev. John Mitford for The Gentleman's Magazine in July 1833.[3][4]
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John Nyren died in 1837, but there was a second edition of the book in 1840 followed by eleven subsequent editions to 1855. These editions were retitled Nyren's Cricketers Guide.[5] A further edition, with introduction, footnotes and appendices by F. S. Ashley-Cooper, was published by Gay & Bird in 1902.[5][6] In 1907, there was another edition produced by E. V. Lucas titled The Hambledon Men.[7] Lucas' edition included Mitford's review and the interview by James Pycroft of Billy Beldham, one of Nyren's particular heroes, as well as pieces by Arthur Haygarth and Mary Russell Mitford, accompanied by Lucas's own commentary on the source material.[5][8]
In 1996, during researches for his Hambledon book The Glory Days of Cricket, Ashley Mote discovered a handwritten manuscript of The Cricketers of My Time which was signed and dated March 1833. A forensic examination was undertaken to determine the age of the manuscript and proved that it was written within a few years at most of that date, which was three months after the serial in The Town concluded and three months before the first edition of The Young Cricketer's Tutor was published. In addition, a handwriting analysis verified that neither Nyren nor Cowden Clarke wrote the manuscript, which is believed to have been the work of a professional copyist using a steel-nib pen. There are a number of differences between the serial and the manuscript, but the version in the book's first edition has only minor differences from the manuscript.[9]
In 1998, Mote published his findings in a new version of The Cricketers of My Time which compares the serial with both the manuscript and the first edition.[9]
Value as a source
Much of historical, social and literary value can be gleaned from Nyren's work in which his essential purpose was to provide biographical information about the players whom he knew and remembered. For the most part, they were associated with the Hambledon Club and played for Hampshire, but he also talked about cricketers from Surrey and Kent who were Hampshire's usual opponents, sometimes in the form of an All-England team. Nyren is now regarded as a key source for information about these players.[2]
John Small
Nyren had great admiration for master batsman John Small, whose son Jack Small seems to have been his best friend.[10] In his appraisal of John Small senior, Nyren says:[11]
the name of John Small, the elder, shines among them (the contemporary players) in all the lustre of a star of the first magnitude.
John Small, who scored the earliest known century in first-class cricket, was certainly a major reason for Hampshire's success in the Hambledon era.[11]
Richard Nyren
Nyren says much about his own father, Richard Nyren, who was the Hambledon Club captain, including a description of him as "(the finest) specimen of the thorough-bred old English yeoman".[12] Although John Nyren was at pains to show undue respect, almost amounting to obsequious fawning where social superiors were concerned (especially the unsavoury Lord Frederick Beauclerk), he tells of his father "maintaining an opinion with great firmness against the 3rd Duke of Dorset and Sir Horatio Mann and being proved right".[12] But while his father reportedly stood up to aristocrats, John Nyren himself resorted to "social grovelling" via the addition to his text of "ingratiating remarks addressed to the great and powerful".[13]
The "monster bat" incident
The Memoranda seems to have been added hastily and is not generally seen as providing much value,[14] but it does include the following:[15]
Several years since (I do not recollect the precise date) a player, named White, of Ryegate(sic), brought a bat to a match, which being the width of the stumps, effectually defended his wicket from the bowler: and, in consequence, a law was passed limiting the future width of the bat to 4¼ inches. Another law was decreed that the ball should not weigh less than 5½ oz, or more than 5¾ oz.
The Laws of cricket still stipulate the limit on the width of the bat that was agreed by the Hambledon Club as a result of the "Monster Bat Incident". While Nyren, a boy at the time of the incident in 1771, may have thought that White was cheating, it is now believed that he forced an issue as the modern straight bats were a recent innovation, replacing the original hockey-stick shape, and no standard dimensions had as yet been agreed.
Lamborn
One of Nyren's most vivid biographical sketches is his chapter on Lamborn, who was clearly a ripe character. But this chapter has significance for cricket's history and evolution as Lamborn was evidently the originator of the underarmoff-break. Nyren says:[16]
He was a bowler – right-handed, and he had the most extraordinary delivery I ever saw. The ball was delivered quite low, and with a twist (sic); not like that of the generality of right-handed bowlers, but just the reverse way: that is, if bowling to a right-handed hitter, his ball would twist from the off stump into the leg.
While the "general" way for an overarm bowler to spin the ball is from off to leg (i.e., an off-break), the opposite was true for the underarm bowlers and Lamborn was thus one of bowling's great innovators. The pitched delivery was still new, having been introduced in the 1760s, when Lamborn played (i.e., his known career was from 1777 to 1781). Until the 1760s, bowlers had always rolled or skimmed the ball towards the batsman so spin bowling itself was a new skill. Nyren consistently refers to "spin" as "twist".
Legacy
The Cricketers of My Time lacks structure and is often disjointed to the extent that it resembles "a couple of old cricketers on Test Match Special reminiscing about the great players of the past".[17] Nevertheless, it remains an "extraordinarily vivid, exciting and unique book".[17] Unless new sources of information about Georgian cricket should come to light, "nothing could hope to replace the charm of the account of those great days handed down to us by John Nyren".[5]David Underdown called it "a wonderfully evocative, nostalgic account of the (Hambledon) Club's great days in the 1770s and 1780s.[18]
Harry Altham pointed out that the book was written some forty to fifty years after the zenith of Hambledon and so "it is not to be wondered at" that Nyren was often "vague as to detail and very sparing of date and place".[19] Altham calls Nyren the "Herodotus, and not the Thucydides, of cricket" and writes of Nyren's ability to "make his characters live more vividly".[19]
Rowland Bowen, often a prickly critic of other writers, described The Cricketers of My Time as "the locus classicus for late eighteenth century cricket personalities" and added that "the book is outstanding as literature".[20] Bowen was convinced that Cowden Clarke was the author and had used Nyren's spoken reminiscences as his source. Bowen wrote that "Clarke makes us hear the very sound of the old man himself talking".[21] Underdown said that it is "not important" who wrote the actual text as "in either case it originated with Nyren".[22]
Apart from the biographical information for which it is invaluable, the book contains other pieces of information that are useful and sometimes original. For example, Nyren is the first writer to mention boundaries in a cricketing context, although it meant something different then as they were parallel lines in single wicket matches used to define the limits of the outfield.[23]
A noted counterpoint in Nyren's work is his eulogy of the Hambledon era against his contempt for the roundarm era which began a few years before The Cricketers of My Time was published. Nyren made several references to roundarm as "throwing".[24] In short, he "reckoned the game had been ruined by allowing roundarm".[7] According to Altham, Nyren was one of the foremost critics of roundarm along with William Ward and Thomas Lord.[25] Altham recounts how Nyren stated in his first edition, in the section headed "Protest", that Nyren prophesied: "the elegant and scientific game of cricket will degenerate into a mere exhibition of rough, coarse horseplay!"[25][26]
Plagiarism
Mote's 1998 edition of the book begins with an introduction in which he outlines the discovery of the manuscript and the actions that followed up to publication of the new version. In addition, he criticised Nyren's work and pointed out the plagiarism that is evident in the part called The Young Cricketer's Tutor.[27] Mote believes that Nyren included this piece to add bulk to what would otherwise have been a slim volume.[28]
There is no evidence of plagiarism in The Cricketers of My Time itself (or in the short Memoranda) which contains "such qualities of spontaneity that they might almost have been taken from dictation straight onto the page".[29]
In 1801, Thomas Boxall published Rules and Instructions for Playing at the Game of Cricket and this was "the first attempt to set laws, methods and tactics down on paper". The work, which had less than 6,000 words, was revised and reprinted several times to 1804 and was well received.[30] In 1816, the writer John Baxter published Instructions and Rules for Playing the Noble Game of Cricket under the name of William Lambert. This was also successful and was reprinted a number of times till 1828 with a further listed edition in 1832 that has been lost.[31]
Although Lambert was a top-class player in the Napoleonic period, he could not read or write and so Baxter was cricket's first "ghost writer".[27]
The Lambert/Baxter book borrowed heavily from Boxall but was longer and had a structured format. In The Young Cricketer's Tutor, Nyren blatantly copied Lambert's structure and attempted to present new content by overwriting Lambert's constructions, generally with longer sentences.[31]
In the following table, the page numbers given are those in the newest version of the book edited by Mote in 1998. The date published in The Town refers to the relevant sections in which each player was discussed. The essential difference between Mote's version and the original 1833 book is that Mote arranged the parts in the order that they were written: hence, The Cricketers of My Time comes first and precedes The Young Cricketer's Tutor with the Memoranda at the end.
Charles Cowden Clarke was an English author who was best known for his books on Shakespeare. He was also known for his compilation of poems as well as his edition of The Canterbury Tales, which was rendered into prose and widely used.
The Hambledon Club was a social club that is famous for its organisation of 18th century cricket matches. By the late 1770s it was the foremost cricket club in England.
John Small was an English professional cricketer who played during the 18th century and had one of the longest careers on record. Born at Empshott, Hampshire, he is generally regarded as the greatest batsman of the 18th century and acknowledged as having been the first to master the use of the modern straight bat which was introduced in the 1760s. He probably scored the earliest known century in important cricket. The strength of the Hambledon/Hampshire team during Small's prime years can be seen in the team being rated the (unofficial) Champion County in 10 seasons: 1766–1771, 1776–1777, 1779 and 1783. He died at Petersfield, where he was in residence for most of his life and where he established businesses.
Broadhalfpenny Down is a historic cricket ground in Hambledon, Hampshire. It is known as the "Cradle of Cricket" because it was the home venue in the 18th century of the Hambledon Club, but cricket predated the club and ground by at least two centuries. The club is in the parish of Hambledon close to the neighbouring parish of Clanfield. The club took the name of the neighbouring rural village of Hambledon, about 2.7 miles away by road.
Edward "Lumpy" Stevens was an English professional cricketer who played first-class cricket in the 18th century. He was an outstanding bowler who is generally regarded as the first great bowler in the game's history. He was universally known by his nickname and was always called "Lumpy" in contemporary scorecards and reports.
Richard Nyren (1734–1797) was an English professional cricketer who played first-class cricket during the heyday of the Hambledon Club. A genuine all-rounder and the earliest known left-hander of note, Nyren was the captain of Hampshire when its team included players like John Small, Thomas Brett and Tom Sueter. Although the records of many matches in which he almost certainly played have been lost, he made 51 known appearances between 1764 and 1784. He was known as the team's "general" on the field and, for a time, acted as the club secretary as well as taking care of matchday catering for many years.
This is a bibliography of literary and historical works about cricket. The list is sorted by author's name. It is inevitably highly selective. The 1984 edition of E. W. Padwick's A Bibliography of Cricket had more than 10,000 entries.
In cricket, roundarm bowling is a bowling style that was introduced in the first quarter of the 19th century and largely superseded underarm bowling by the 1830s. Using a roundarm action, the bowlers extend their arm about 90 degrees from their body at the point where they release the ball. Roundarm fell into decline after 1864 when the current style of overarm bowling was legalised, although W. G. Grace continued to use it to the end of his career.
Thomas Walker was an English cricketer who played for Hampshire in the days of the Hambledon Club and later for Surrey. He was famous for his brilliant defensive batting. He is also credited with introducing, roundarm bowling, the predecessor of modern overarm bowling.
John Nyren was an English cricketer and author. Nyren made 16 known appearances in first-class cricket from 1787 to 1817. He achieved lasting fame as the author of The Cricketers of My Time, which was first published in 1832 as a serial in a periodical called The Town and was then included in The Young Cricketer's Tutor, published in 1833 by Effingham Wilson of London. Nyren's collaborator in the work was Charles Cowden Clarke.
Lamborn was a significant English cricketer who played for the Hambledon Club in the 18th century and is recognised as one of the greatest innovators in the history of bowling.
Thomas Sueter was an English cricketer who represented Hampshire as a member of the Hambledon Club.
George Leer was a famous English cricketer who played for Hampshire in the time of the Hambledon Club.
John Small was an English cricketer who played for the Hambledon Club. He is also associated with Hampshire, Marylebone Cricket Club, Kent and Surrey.
Alresford Cricket Club was one of the strongest cricket teams in England during the late 18th century. It represented the adjacent small towns of New Alresford and Old Alresford in Hampshire. According to John Arlott, between about 1770 and 1795 Alresford "stood higher in cricket than any town its size has done in the history of the game".
Cricket, and hence English amateur cricket, probably began in England during the medieval period but the earliest known reference concerns the game being played c.1550 by children on a plot of land at the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, Surrey. It is generally believed that cricket was originally a children's game as it is not until the beginning of the 17th century that reports can be found of adult participation.
Amateur status had a special meaning in English cricket. The amateur in this context was not merely someone who played cricket in his spare time but a particular type of first-class cricketer who existed officially until 1962, when the distinction between amateurs and professionals was abolished and all first-class players became nominally professional.
In cricket in the early 1760s, there was an evolutionary transition from the sport's "pioneering phase" to its "pre-modern phase" when bowlers began to bowl pitched deliveries by pitching the ball towards the wicket instead of rolling or skimming it along the ground as they had previously done. The essential bowling action was still underarm but the introduction of a ball travelling through the air coupled with a bounce was a key point of evolution in the sport's history, especially as it was the catalyst for the invention of the straight bat, which replaced the old "hockey stick" design. It was the first of three keypoint evolutions in bowling: the others were the introduction of the roundarm style in the 1820s and overarm in the 1860s.
In English cricket, the period from 1776 to 1800 saw significant growth and development in English cricket to the point that it became a popular sport nationwide, having outgrown its origin in the south-eastern counties. Prominent northern clubs were established at Nottingham and Sheffield.
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