Adelaide Oval Pictures 1874-1899

Martin Chandler | 7:26am BST 12 August 2018

Published: 2018
Pages: 46
Author: Whimpress, Bernard
Publisher: Private
Rating: 3 stars

I am not entirely sure how many cricket publications Bernard Whimpress has written, but the number is at least 27, because that is the number I have reposing in various parts of my collection. I understand he is a good friend of Archie Mac, so I had better be careful with what I write, but in some ways I have to say I do find him a little frustrating.

Lest the Mac be readying himself to issue me with a disciplinary I had better enlarge on that comment sooner rather than later. One of the things I value, and have done increasingly as my collection has grown, is good order. I have three main ‘sections’; post war books, pre war books and limited editions. The former is inevitably the largest by a distance, and its tentacles pervade almost every room in my house. The latter two are more manageable, in that for the time being at least they can both be housed in what I like to call my library.

After those main blocks there is then ‘everything else’. There is the odd ‘coffee table’ book in there, and other things that are too large to fit in a normal bookcase. But in the main these are the thin ones, booklets and pamphlets which to my eyes do not sit well with the books. I never have found a satisfactory way of organising those.

Which brings me back to Bernard Whimpress. Slightly surprisingly he figures amongst the oversized books, having been responsible for the Official MCC Treasures, a collection of facsimile memorabilia which has run to several editions. He, naturally, does not qualify for anything pre war, but features once amongst the limited editions, his interesting survey of illegal bowling in Australia, Chuckers.

This is not to suggest for one moment that Whimpress has only produced one limited edition because, in truth, the vast majority of his output is released in that form, but most are slim booklets and therefore, because the title and author are not printed on the spine, I feel need to be stored with ‘the others’. These I try to organise by genre, which is made impossible by a man covering such esoteric subjects as Whimpress does – to illustrate my point where on earth do you put this one if you are arranging by subject matter?

The result is I end up with several small clutches of Whimpress publications, and not all sit easily together even then. At least Adelaide Oval Pictures 1874-1899 has some obvious bedfellows, the Adelaide Oval being a subject that, one way or another, Whimpress has covered in a number of ways.

The title here conveys a straightforward message. Inside there are, in chronological order, 22 images of the ground in Victorian times. The format is consistent, the image appearing on one page and the facing page consisting of details of where the image came from and a few other notes. Most are photographs, but a few are drawings. In the beginning there is little more than an open field to be seen. By the dawn of the twentieth century there are two major stands present.

This little publication was never going to be a best seller, and no doubt that is why Whimpress has produced it in a limited edition of just fifty copies. Despite that short run it is certainly not unreasonably priced, and will be of interest to anyone who loves the history of the game of cricket, and particularly those who are familiar with the 21^st century Adelaide Oval.