Brown and Tunnicliffe, Denton and Wainwright, cum multis aliis. It is indeed a wonderful list of names, names of cricketers of all sorts and conditions, as versatile as they as numerous. One wonders, considering the years that they cover, that Yorkshire has ever been anything but champion county, especially as the names excluded are only a whit less well known than those that are included.
Such in brief is the history, a mere sketch, of our more important counties, their rise and their fall: a full and complete account of them would fill the whole of a goodly volume, which would be replete with interest and anecdote, but which would require the patience and the genius of a Macaulay or a Froude for its adequate and comprehensive compilation. Cricket may indeed be but a mere pastime, but it is a pastime that has come home to the hearts of Englishmen, or at least to the hearts of a goodly number of Englishmen, during a period of some two hundred years. He who would write that history must be a man of infinite patience and vast perseverance. He will not find cricket history writ large in columns of big print, but, for the earlier days at least, often packed away in obscure corners of local journals. Thirty years ago there was no daily sporting paper, while the big "dailies" took but little notice of cricket matches. Add a hundred years on to the thirty, and only local papers record a great match. Consequently, he who would write a full and accurate account of the cricket played by the counties, must rummage even more painfully
