FS Ashley-Cooper: The Herodutus of Cricket
Martin Chandler |Published: 2024
Pages: 16
Author: Rosenwater, Irving
Publisher: Private
Rating: 4 stars
This was the first of Irving Rosenwater’s limited editions, and a tribute to a man for whom he clearly had enormous respect. Ashley-Cooper died a few months before Rosenwater was born, so he never knew him, but he nonetheless writes of him in this essay with great affection.
Ashley-Cooper was a man who, in common with Rosenwater, essentially devoted his whole life to cricket, its history, statistics and how they were recorded. Neither played the game to any significant standard, but both built up impressive collections of cricketana as well as adding many items of their own to the literature of the game.
Although Rosenwater did not know Ashley-Cooper himself he must have met many who did over the years and his detailed account of his life deals as much with Ashley-Cooper the man as it does with recording his work and his oeuvre. It is certainly an important account of the life of a man who, rather more so than his contemporaries, remains important today.
The monograph was originally intended to appear in Rowland Bowen’s Cricket Quarterly, but Bowen wanted to edit it. A refusal to allow any amendment to his work was an aspect of Rosenwater’s character for which he was renowned. In the end Bowen wrote his own article and the pair did not work together again.
The difference between the two was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not great. Both acknowledged Ashley-Cooper’s pre-eminence, and both acknowledged that he was, albeit rarely, capable of making a mistake. Bowen however wanted to underline that point more than Rosenwater, who preferred to if not skate over Ashey-Cooper’s occasional fallibility, rather to treat it as an endearing quality.
In the event Rosenwater self-published his work in a signed and numbered limited edition of just 25 copies, in itself a tribute to the man who produced many such short run limited editions in his life. For those who are more interested in simply reading Ashley-Cooper’s story rather than shelling out a significant sum for a rare publication the essay can also be found in Volume II Issue 3 of the Journal of the Cricket Society.
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