The History

In 1992 Francis Fukuyama declared the End of History. Lee Gilbert said hold my beer and went off to compile one of the most impressive historical treatises of the 21st century. The Complete Statistical History of Anson St George Cricket Club; 1960-present. Simply known to Ansoners as ‘The History’.

It might sound hyperbolic but it’s genuinely a monumental achievement by Lee who started the whole thing from scratch and spent months and months and months of lucubration going through every page of every score book from 1960 up until the present day collating and recording every detail of every person who has ever played for Anson St George.

Every player’s name, every run, every boundary, every wicket, every maiden over, every catch, every milestone, every record, every match result is in The History. For a snippet of context, that’s 394 different players, 133,077 runs and 7,311 wickets all accounted for.

Sadly, the scorebooks from before 1960 are not available and there are a handful of books missing from the 1960s, possibly up in someone’s loft somewhere or, more probably, lost to a skip and the tip for eternity. Perhaps in 2000 years people will still be wondering as to the whereabouts of these books and what’s in them as if they were Plato’s lost dialogue. Still, such is the extent and depth of The History that calling Lee’s work anything other than complete would be an injustice to all the time and attention to detail he has put into it.  

The History is to Lee what Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is to Gibbon, Histories is to Tacitus, and The Ecclesiastical History of the English is to Bede. In fact I would moot changing Lee’s Anson sobriquet from Leegee to The Venerable. 

Lee’s motivation for putting his masterpiece together was purely for the love of the club, and was in no way motivated by the desire to show how he is 9,247 runs ahead of the second all time Anson run scorer, or has 166 catches and 38 stumpings more than anyone else. 

Sam mentioned in his captain’s blog that The History is something that he reveres and I know he isn’t the only one. Lots of cricketers obsess about stats and for Anson players there are a lot to pour over in The History whether it is batting, bowling, fielding, or season by season totals that you’re interested in. For me, the cricketing currency that I’m always looking to increase (slowly) are total runs, number of 50s, and career batting average.

Many of us like to see how we stack up against Anson players past and present. I would be lying if I said that working my way up the list of the all time Anson run scorers wasn’t something I was interested in. Seeing where you rank against all other players in the 60 year history of one club is a very attractive thing and I don’t think too many other clubs would have as comprehensive a statistical history going back as far as ours to measure yourself up against.

There are a lot of names in The History that I am personally familiar with, but there are many that I don’t know much about, like Henry Burnham who still holds the club record high score of 181 not out, set in August 1966, or Fred Webb who is the only Anson player to take 10 wickets in a match, also in August 1966. I think about what an incredible time that must have been to play for the club, and whether those records will ever be broken. Will anyone ever surpass Len Wale’s 58 wickets in a season in 1961?

Some of us also amuse ourselves looking at some of oddities in The History, such as what happened in Vic Tibbles’ one game in 1976 (other than the one duck and didn’t bowl) that led to him to never make another appearance, who on Earth was Excell (one game in 1960), and what did Fred Pennicard (144 games between 1960 and 1986) think of Alf. There is someone who played one game in 1977 called Driver, who I assume is someone who brought one of the other players to the game and was roped into playing.

We may not know very much, or anything, about who these people were, or what they were like as characters, but clearly there were some great cricketers and, thanks to Lee, at least all of their cricketing achievements will be immortalised. For all of us, there is something reassuring in knowing that once you have made a contribution to something that it is recorded for all time and for all to see.

This blog post is essentially a homage to Lee’s magnum opus, but it has to be said that he could not have compiled The History if it hadn’t been for our wonderful scorers. When I first started with Anson our scorebook was kept by George Netley. George was a very good scorer and recorded matches in great detail, including all timings and dot balls of batsmen’s innings, and all the partnership details. I don’t know if George introduced this detailed scoring to Anson but it’s a great tradition that’s still carried forward today. I did give scoring a go once in 1999 but I’ve been banned ever since on account of my terrible handwriting and spelling.

We’re very fortunate these days to have another great man in Hugh Henry to score our matches. Hugh is an absolute ace at scoring and has done so to a very high standard in the Essex Premier League and for ICC associate nations’ international matches. He’s got coloured pencils and everything and keeps all our records up to date on our Play-Cricket website.

Thanks to Hugh and Lee we get regular print outs of all averages as the season progresses and Lee also provides us with a sheet of milestones that each individual, or the club overall (I’m itching for a time game to help us secure our 200th draw), might make in a season. I don’t know many cricketers who don’t care about stats and these printouts give us all opportunities to claim certain bragging rights or provide a little bit of extra fun or motivation and even the odd wager about who will achieve what first, or perform better over the season.

Lee keeps The History updated every year and even though it’s many years now since he did the initial work of compiling all the old books I still can’t thank him enough for giving us this extra perk that helps make Anson that little bit more special. To help ensure that The History is more widely appreciated I’ve now created a new page where you can access the most recent version. You can also find a link to this in the menu at the top of every page on this site. Happy reading!