Arthur Haygarth’s Scores and Biographies Volume XIX

Martin Chandler | 12:00am BST 26 October 2014

Published: 2014
Pages: 666
Author: Haygarth, Arthur
Publisher: Roger Heavens
Rating: 4 stars

For a book that is lauded by all who value the literature of cricket, and which was first published more than 150 years ago, I find it surprising that Scores and Biographies is, in general terms, as easy to find as it is. We will see on Guy Fawkes’ day just how much an 1864 Wisden is currently worth when a copy that used to belong to Tony Hancock’s manager/brother Roger goes under the hammer at Christies. I suspect that the estimate of GBP5,000-8,000 will be achieved comfortably, and that is for a copy that is far from perfect. On the other hand if a collector would like an original copy of Volume 1 of Scores and Biographies John McKenzie’s latest catalogue has a reasonable copy on offer for GBP75. There is a certain perversity to this as, to the serious researcher, John Wisden’s little pot-boiler is about as much use as the proverbial chocolate fireguard, whereas the weighty tome that appeared under the imprint of Frederick Lillywhite is invaluable.

The man responsible for Scores and Biographies, Arthur Haygarth, was a defensive amateur batsman who played 136 First Class matches between 1841 and 1861. His average was 13.05, which suggests he was a very ordinary cricketer indeed, but the game was different in those days. Haygarth was certainly not in the front rank of batsmen, but at that time 20 was an impressive career average, and such luminaries as Nicholas Felix, Alfred Mynn and Fuller Pilch all fell short of that, and another great, George Parr, only just crept over the mark.

Haygarth’s was, in absolute terms, a life spent totally immersed in cricket. When he wasn’t playing the game or coaching it he was collecting scores and biographical information about cricketers on an industrial scale. All the game’s historians and writers have had cause to be grateful to him for over 150 years now.

The desire to acquire cricketing information first gripped a 14 year old Haygarth as a schoolboy at Harrow, and it never let go. Between 1839 and his death at the age of 77 in 1903 Haygarth wrote literally thousands of letters in furtherance of his quest. Some were to clubs, seeking details of match scores, some to players enclosing questionnaires for completion and return, and yet more to anyone else he thought might shed further light on the game.

In addition to word of mouth or penned missives Haygarth also visited the game’s main centers, and picked up all the books, pamphlets and other published information he could find. He made a living from his coaching and from contributing to a variety of books, magazines and journals, but his main ambition was to publish Scores and Biographies.

There had been scores published before Haygarth. Samuel Britcher started the ball rolling with a series of annual publications that appeared between 1790 and 1805, which are now the most sought after items in the literature of the game. Also familiar to the most hardened of cricket tragics are names like Epps, Bentley and Denison, all of whom on varying scales tried to do the same, but none of them lasted.

In 1864 John Wisden established his famous Almanack, although it was a good few years before that modest little book began to resemble the mighty work we know today. Bridging the gap were the various Lillywhite publications, which began in 1849 and continued until 1900. The very earliest, Lillywhite’s Guides, did not initially contain much by way of scorecards or biographies, although those began to be introduced in a rudimentary fashion in the 1850s

In 1862 Frederick Lillywhite struck a deal with Haygarth and finally published the first and second volumes of Scores and Biographies, and he published two more the following year. These covered the period 1746 – 1854. The relationship was not one that blossomed. Lillywhite did not give Haygarth the full credit for his researches, and to add to the problems the books did not prove to be a profitable enterprise, and it was 1876 before Volume 5 appeared, now under the aegis of the MCC. Between then and 1895 another nine volumes came out at regular intervals to bring the total to fourteen.

Despite the appearance of those additional volumes the MCC found themselves unable to keep up with Haygarth’s acquisition of further information and the fourteenth volume did not get beyond 1878. By the time Haygarth died in 1903 his archive had reached 1898, so a further two decades remained unpublished.

The MCC did not have any more success than Lillywhite in making Scores and Biographies pay its way, and copies of some volumes were still available, new, well into the 1960s. There was however some enthusiasm amongst cricket tragics to continue to publish, and the next major historian of the game, Frederick Ashley-Cooper, prepared a fifteenth volume, this time consisting of biographies only, which appeared in 1925.

And at fifteen was where matters were left before Roger Heavens came into possession of Haygarth’s manuscripts in the 1990s. There had been an effort by the noted maverick of the cricket writing world, Major Rowland Bowen, in the 1960s but his idea, to produce a single, final volume taking the story up to 1882, when Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game began, came to nought.

Roger’s first decision, a brave one in light of the problems Lillywhite and the MCC had in shifting copies, was to publish a facsimile limited edition of the first fifteen, and one or two appeared annually for the next few years in numbered print runs of 500. He then began working forwards, and has been responsible now for a total of four new volumes, taking the story to the end of 1882, this latest book covering just that single calendar year.

Having introduced the product I can now get on with the task of reviewing Volume 19. The bulk of it consists of scorecards. All of the First Class matches of the period are covered, as well as many minor matches. Not all are eleven a side, and the scores come from the whole of the cricket-playing world, although most are English. The biographies in this edition tend to the rudimentary, but there is no lack of narrative content, as there are observations, on occasion lengthy, on some of the matches. There are also a number of reports from meetings of the First Class counties, and the matches involving the Australians usually come in for special attention.

The scores in the book are arranged in strictly chronological order, so it is rather different from Wisden, which has its various sections for the counties, the tourists, the MCC and the universities. One of the consequences of this is that in Volume 19 the Australians crop up with disarming regularity. The latter part of the English tour down under of 1881/82 is featured in the early pages, the 1882 Australian visit to England in the middle and, towards the end, the campaign of 1882/83 is dealt with.

Such profligacy in the scheduling of the ultimate cricketing battle seems remarkable given the need for all travel to be by sea, but it does illustrate that even then contests between England and Australia were popular with the bean counters. These were historic encounters too. Although Haygarth didn’t know it at the time, and he didn’t quite live long enough to see the term The Ashes come back into vogue, the solitary Test in 1882 is the famous Spofforth’s Match, wherein lies the origin of the legend. The series of 1882/83 covers the equally famous trip of Ivo Bligh’s side in their quest to restore English honour by regaining the Ashes.

A look at the teams in these Test matches is instructive. The Australian side, certainly the core of it, remained the same throughout the year. But when Spofforth skittled England at the Oval the home side had selected just three of the men who had lost 2-0 in Australia the previous winter.

Until I read Volume 19 it had passed me by that the unsuccessful tourists of that previous winter were reassembled late in the 1882 season to do battle once more with the Australians after they had humbled the official England side in Spofforth’s Match. In the first of two encounters the Australians won comfortably once again, but without rain’s intervention the English side would surely have won the second.

As for Bligh’s side that contained just two men from the 1881/82 tourists, and four from Spofforth’s match. Consistency of selection was much more difficult in those days, when the availability of most English amateurs was limited, but reading Volume 19 of Scores and Biographies demonstrates, to me at least, that had our early Test sides been truly representative of the strength of English cricket the overall Ashes score, currently standing at 123 matches to 103 in favour of our Antipodean friends, would almost certainly be stood on its head.

Is Volume 19 of Scores and Biographies going to be a big seller? That one is easy to answer and the response is a resounding no. Not because the book is anything other than a splendid addition to the literature of our great game, but for the rather more mundane reason that there are only 175 copies, almost all of which have been snapped up by the list of subscribers that appears in the book, and who paid a heavyweight GBP100 for their copies. One day, bearing in mind that the first 15 had their original print runs plus another 500, Volume 19 is going to be very difficult to acquire, so if you can snap one up it might well prove a shrewd investment.

As to an overall measure of quality of the content I have no hesitation in giving Messrs Haygarth and Heavens four stars for their efforts. In many ways its bringing home to me the illusory nature of Australia’s lead over England in the continuing saga that is the Ashes makes it a five star book as far as I’m concerned, but I don’t want to antagonise the Mac, so I’ll stick to four.