Laugh 
We've had another good laugh at your comedy turn. Regards to AA your dog I suppose and your other two fans. We all wait with baited breath to see if Commons to Lords comes up to our standards. It'll be a blow if it doesn't but Mr Maun can always rely on you to help him out. After all in a couple of weeks it'll be all his work you've copied to replace the crap on your website. Regards from all in the Law department.

Review
Book of the Year Award 2010 Nominee
FROM COMMONS TO LORD'S Volume 1 1700-1750 
Ian Maun 

From a statistical and historical perspective one of the most important books of 2009 was the first volume of Ian Maun's series on eighteenth century cricket. In fact, after delving into this rich assemblage of material, published in association with both the MCC and the ACS, it is probably true to say that this is the most important book of the past few decades. This claim is based on the fact that the author, who works at Exeter University, has meticulously unearthed many new details as well as hitherto unknown matches from the early 1700s. 

This book draws heavily from newspapers, journals, letters and other documents housed in national and provincial collections, as well as other resources not generally available to, or used by, the majority of cricket historians, including history books, dictionaries, novels, plays and poems. Moreover, this is not a reworking of other writers contributions, as the author is not afraid to question previously published material or other works which have hitherto been accepted by historians as being chapter and verse on 18th century cricket. Indeed, this book includes more than 200 references to cricket which, until now, have never before been published whilst several errors and omissions have been carefully corrected and filled. One can only wonder at what further riches lie in the next three volumes of this series. 

The work stemmed several years ago from the author’s desire to understand the relationship of the Hambledon Club’s exploits to the cricket which had preceded those illustrious days. What started out as a series of notes trying to disentangle what was fact and what was fiction has metamorphosed into a work which provides a sharper and more complete picture of the noble game than previously achieved by many previous authors as well as some of the great scholars of cricket history.

This period of tricorn hats, curved bats and two-stump wickets is vividly brought back to life by the year-by-year listing of references, supported by the accompanying notes and the series of beautifully reproduced images. As such, it is not a book which will be slavishly read time and again from cover to cover. Instead, it is a fantastic reference book with, as one would expect from someone with a strong academic background, a superb set of footnotes and bibliographical tools. 

Indeed, in his accompanying notes, the publisher claims that this book “will assuredly become the premier recourse for anybody interested in early and 18th century cricket history.” I would unhesitatingly venture one step further and suggest that in years to come, the author’s name will be spoken of in the same breath as Haygarth, Waghorn or Buckley. High praise indeed, but so richly deserved.

review by Andrew Hignell