Northamptonshire County Cricket League Yearbooks
J.L. Carr moved from Birmingham to Kettering in 1951 to become Headmaster of Highfields Primary School. There he joined Kettering Cricket Club which played in a local league with 10 other clubs: British Timken, Finedon Dolben, Northampton Vallence, Old Northamptonians, Peterborough Town, Irthlingborough Town, Rothwell Town, Rushden Town, Wellingborough, and Wolverton.
Carr was probably the instigator of the first Northamptonshire County Cricket League Yearbook, issued in 1956, presumably based on his experience of the MCCC Yearbooks that he had helped to edit from 1948 to 1951. The League had been established in 1951. Yearbooks were published from 1956 every year until the last, edited by Carr at least, was issued in 1961. During this period a second division was created and third division was about to come into existence in 1962. There are now 14 divisions in the Northamptonshire League.
Carr described his terms of reference in the first issue: (1) to tabulate facts necessary for the administration of the County cricket league, and: (2) to set down records and information likely to strengthen its tradition and to quicken interest in it.
Each Yearbook contained a list of officials of the league and of each team; a list of fixtures for the coming season; a summary of the previous season with the name of the champion and a league table; cricket statistics summarised for the previous five years, and then increasing with each season; a list of highest scores and largest batting partnerships in the previous year; a list of the most wickets taken in the previous year; a list of the highest and lowest score by each team during the previous year (quite a wide range); the players with the highest batting averages who had a minimum of eight innings and an average of more than 20; and the bowling averages of players who had taken 20 or more wickets at an average of 20 or less. In some issues Carr featured one of the clubs or presented an interview vebatim with a notable cricketer in the league. Carr also provided small, usually square decorations for pages and designs for the covers of some issues.
Carr had no involvement in the 1957 Yearbook as he was teaching in a High School in Huron, South Dakota, something he refers to in the 1956 and 1958 Yearbooks.
Carr's name is not recorded among the cricket statistics in any Yearbook. However according to an article in "The Guardian" (27 Nov 1980), he scored his last century, aged 52, so in about 1964, for Kettering CC 2nd XI. If there had been a Yearbook, it would have been included.
All the Yearbooks were all printed by V.B. Pike of Kettering, a printer that Carr used to print The Northants Campaigner, which he started to edit in about 1961. So he changed from editing an annual cricket yearbook to a biannual teachers' magazine.
Northamptonshire County Cricket League 1956 Yearbook
ISBN: None
Size: 183 x 125 mm
Pages: pp 24
Binding: perfect?
Cover: grey textured printed card covers
Paper: white
Editor: J.L. Carr, 27 Mill Dale Road, Kettering
Cover artist: none
Internal illustrations: none
Printed by: V.B. Pike, Printer, Canon Street, Kettering (printed at base of rear cover)
Price: not stated
Content: Notes written by Carr on page 9.
I particularly like to thank club secretaries for their fine response to the enquiries about the past five years, and my wife for checking my tabulation of their statistics. You have to be a staunch supporter of the game to undertake a club secretary’s job, so that it did not surprise me when several replied that they had even enjoyed the grubbing up of old score-books. Doubtless members will find inaccuracies and notice omissions. Well, let your club secretary know that the 1957 handbook can be both the Revised and Authorized edition. I shall be abroad for a year after early August...
Notes: This is the first Yearbook of the league.
Front cover
Northamptonshire County Cricket League 1958 Yearbook
ISBN: None
Size: 183 x 125 mm
Pages: pp 28
Binding: perfect?
Cover: red printed card covers
Paper: white
Editor: J.L. Carr, 27 Mill Dale Road, Kettering
Cover artist: (J.L. Carr)
Internal illustrations: six small drawings by JLC
Printed by: V.B. Pike, V.B. Pike, Printer, Canon Street, Kettering (at base of p 28).
Price: not stated
Content: Carr provided the cover drawing and six small, square drawings on pages 4, 6, 12, 17, 19 and 28.
On page 13 Carr wrote a summary of the season and this:
The Yearbook Editor has returned from a year in the United States Cricket Mission Field. Only one game was played – between Custer County (who had never won a match) versus the Rest of Dakota (who had never played one). Because of injuries, the game was not completed.
Notes:
Front cover
Northamptonshire County Cricket League 1959 Yearbook
ISBN: None
Size: 183 x 125 mm
Pages: pp 28
Binding: perfect?
Cover: green printed card covers
Paper: white
Editor: J.L. Carr, 27 Mill Dale Road, Kettering
Cover artist: (J.L. Carr)
Internal illustrations: six small drawings by JLC
Printed by: V.B. Pike, V.B. Pike, Printer, Canon Street, Kettering (inside rear cover).
Price: not stated
Content: On page 20 Carr wrote a summary of the season and this:
The Handbook is now far too widely read. Someone lent a copy to the Rector of Kettering and its editor is now also editor (temporarily) of the Parish Magazine and is having a confusing time with average runs, attendances, collections, overs, record bell-peels (sic) and batsmen and others who leave too early.
Notes: Carr used the drawing on the cover, the other way up, on the cover of the poems of Robert Bloomfield, published seven years later.
Front cover
Northamptonshire County Cricket League 1960 Yearbook
ISBN: None
Size: 183 x 125 mm
Pages: pp 36
Binding: perfect?
Cover: pale blue printed card covers
Paper: white
Editor: J.L. Carr, 27 Mill Dale Road, Kettering
Cover artist: (J.L. Carr)
Internal illustrations: seven small illustrations
Printed by: V.B. Pike, Printer, Canon Street, Kettering (inside rear cover)
Price: not stated
Content: On page 20 Carr wrote a summary of the season and this:
This was a year to be remembered, a season to tell one’s disbelieving grandchildren about, a summer when farmers wrung their hands and brewers rang their cash registers, when wide crevasses in wickets were added to the dark trees and daisies in a bowler’s armoury, when mishit drives glanced emphatically to even the Old Northamptonian’s boundary, when not a single scorer on the same ground died from exposure.
Notes:
Front cover
Northamptonshire County Cricket League 1961 Yearbook
ISBN: None
Size: 183 x 125 mm
Pages: pp 40
Binding: perfect?
Cover: yellow mat printed card covers
Paper: white
Editor: J.L. Carr, 27 Mill Dale Road, Kettering
Cover artist: JLC
Internal illustrations: eight internal illustrations by JLC
Printed by: V.B. Pike, Printer, Canon Street, Kettering (inside rear cover)
Price: not stated
Content: Carr wrote a summary of the season and some valedictory text:
This Yearbook was begun in 1956 ‘to tabulate facts necessary for the League’s administration and to set down records and information likely to strengthen tradition and quicken interest’. Because of the extraordinary co-operation of club secretaries, I think that one can say that it is now firmly lodged within the fabric of Northamptonshire cricket.
This I think, must be the last that I can edit. ‘More are men’s ends marked than their lives before’ … here is my testament.
Front cover
Cricket is a rather wonderful GAME. But still only a GAME… and this comes hard for a Yorkshireman to say aloud. Who remembers a year later, sometimes a month later, who won? It’s the brilliant catch, the amazing run out, the strategical manoeuvre, the perfect stroke, the game with a shape to it which are remembered. So why not look on our County Leagues as a convenient way of finding enjoyable fixtures with teams of similar merit.
CRICKET IS A GAME. I have said it. I have denied the creed I piped at my father’s knee, A dozen churchyards between Luddenden Foot and Heckmondwyke are protesting. CRICKET IS A GAME. THA LAIKES IT FOR FOON. Now I really must go and hang myself.
Notes: This was the last Yearbook. It had almost twice as many pages as the first Yearbook. Carr was 49. He continued to play for Kettering Town Second XI until at least 1964.
Carr used the same cover illustration for his Dictionary of Extraordinary English Cricketers Volume Two, published in about 1986, which also includes five of the small, square drawings that he used in these Yearbooks.