History of Cricket in Perth from 1812-1894

Martin Chandler | 9:16am BST 23 July 2023

Published: 2023
Pages: 294
Author: Sievwright, William
Publisher: Richard Miller
Rating: 4 stars

Over the last couple of years Dundee based Richard Miller has done a great service to those with an interest in the history of cricket in Scotland. Over that time he has issued nineteen booklets in his Scottish Cricket Memories series. We have reviewed a number of them here. All of them are reprints of cricket writing long since consigned to archives and libraries, and all are presented in similar style and carry an introduction from Richard that puts the original writers and the contents of their work in context.

And now we have the twentieth in the series, albeit a rather different proposition from the previous nineteen. This one is a substantial book, produced as a good quality hard back with a dust jacket. This means this is an expensive one, £75 inclusive of UK postage for one of the 22 copies printed, although on this occasion there are 22 soft back copies available as well at £40.

The first few pages of Richard’s introduction are a fascinating testament to both Richard and Sievwright. Richard tells the story of how he first managed to track down a copy of the elusive text, and to eventually establish that at least four copies exist. That itself is all the more remarkable as a substantial part of each book is written out by hand.

But of course the bulk of the book is simply a transcription of Sievwright’s work, so is it a decent read? There are, as is to be expected, a selection of statistics and scorecards of interesting matches, but the important thing is that the narrative does not become bogged down with accounts of forgotten on field encounters. It is a story that is told chronologically, but few histories of any aspect of the game have avoided that.

This sort of book is generally only of much interest in the locality to which it relates, and/or amongst those who are closely associated with the club(s) featured. One way of broadening the appeal, and a feature that Sievwright adopts to excellent effect, is to feature potted biographies amongst his chapters. These in the main, inevitably, deal with the playing strengths of their subject, and his achievements on the field, but there is other material as well. The other beauty of this approach is that the editor, with full access to modern research tools, is able to add footnotes that shed further light on those that Sievwright has singled out. In that sense this modern edition is rather more than a straight reprint of the original.

It may come as a surprise to some to know that professionals were employed in Perth from as long ago as 1856, and the variety of contractual arrangements those involved had are just one interesting aspect of their employment. In the circumstances it will not come as any surprise to learn that, for the neutral reader at least, the chapter profiling those professionals is likely to prove the most interesting in the book, enhanced once more by the result of Richard’s researches.

The majority of the professionals are not well known names, but there are five who do stand out, four of them Yorkshireman, and the other Surrey wicket keeper Ted Pooley who, 16 years after his stint in Scotland would, had he not been incarcerated in New Zealand at the time, have played in the first ever Test match at the MCG. A man who did play in that game was Yorkshire batsman Andrew Greenwood, who played in Perth in 1869 and another long serving Yorkshire batsman was Louis Hall. The other two of my famous five are better known still, all-rounder Schofield Haigh, and batsman Jack Brown whose famous fourth innings century was the match winning knock in England’s victory in the final and deciding Test of the famous 1894/95 Ashes series.

Sievwright’s original manuscript was illustrated, but Richard has supplemented those illustrations with some from his own collection, as well as a number of images of the original book from which he worked, and consequently of Sievwright’s impressively legible handwriting. All in all this one may not be an essential purchase, but nonetheless is a recommended investment for anyone interested in Scottish cricket, or in the game’s bibliography.