Arthur Gerald Norcott Brodribb (21 May 1915 – 7 October 1999) was a cricket historian and archaeologist.

Life and career

Born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Brodribb was educated at

Eastbourne College Eastbourne College is a co-educational independent school in the British public school tradition, for day and boarding pupils aged 13–18, in the town of Eastbourne on the south coast of England. The College's headmaster is Tom Lawson. Over ...

and read classics and English at

University College, Oxford University College (in full The College of the Great Hall of the University of Oxford, colloquially referred to as "Univ") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It has a claim to being the oldest college of the unive ...

, where his tutor was

C.S. Lewis CS, C-S, C.S., Cs, cs, or cs. may refer to: Job titles * Chief Secretary (Hong Kong) * Chief superintendent, a rank in the British and several other police forces * Company secretary, a senior position in a private sector company or public se ...

. He became a schoolmaster, and from 1956 to 1968 he owned and ran Hydneye House, a prep school in East Sussex. Brodribb was a descendant of the Victorian actor

Sir Henry Irving Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility ( ...

and a founder member of

the Cricket Society The Cricket Society is a charitable organisation founded in 1945 as the Society of Cricket Statisticians at Great Scotland Yard, London. It has grown steadily to be the largest body of its kind in the cricket world. The Cricket Society now has mor ...

. His best-known work in cricket is ''Next Man In'' which "took cricket's Laws and re-examined them all with an eye to their quirks, oddities and exceptions". Among his other famous works are ''Hit for Six'', a compendium of the big-hitters in

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

, and ''The Croucher'', a biography of the early twentieth-century cricketer

Gilbert Jessop Gilbert Laird Jessop (19 May 1874 – 11 May 1955) was an English cricket player, often reckoned to have been the fastest run-scorer cricket has ever known. He was Wisden Cricketer of the Year for 1898. Career Jessop was born in Cheltenham, ...

. Later in his career, he took an interest in archaeology and was awarded a doctorate in 1985 for his thesis on Roman building materials. His ''Roman Brick and Tile'' (1987) remains a key work on the subject. He took a particular interest in the Classis Britannica iron-working site at Beauport Park. Although he never published anything on the subject, he was also involved in researching the Roman roads in the area, especially the road leading north from Beauport Park. His use of

dowsing Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations ( radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in ...

to locate archaeological sites was not always well received in the archaeological community, a fact that was highlighted when archaeological television programme ''

Time Team ''Time Team'' is a British television programme that originally aired on Channel 4 from 16 January 1994 to 7 September 2014. It returned online in 2022 for two episodes released on YouTube. Created by television producer Tim ...

'' excavated at Beauport Park.

Works

Cricket

* ''Champions of Cricket, etc.'' (1947) * ''The English Game'' (anthology) (1948) * ''Cricket in Fiction: A Bibliography'' (1950) * ''All Round the Wicket: A Miscellany of Facts and Fancies of First-Class Cricket'' (1951) * ''Next Man In: A Survey of Cricket Laws and Customs'' (1952) * ''The Book of Cricket Verse'' (1953) * ''A Yankee Looks at Cricket'' (1956) * ''Hit for Six'' (1960) * ''The Art of Nicholas Felix'' (1985) * ''Cricket at Hastings'' (1989) * ''The Lost Art: A History of Under-Arm Bowling'' (1997)

Biographies

* '' Felix on the Bat'' (1962) * '' The Croucher'' (1974) * ''

Maurice Tate Maurice William Tate (30 May 1895 – 18 May 1956) was an English cricketer of the 1920s and 1930s and the leader of England's Test bowling attack for a long time during this period. He was also the first Sussex cricketer to take a wicket with ...

'' (1976)

Archaeology

*
Available on Google Books

References

1915 births 1999 deaths Cricket historians and writers People from Hastings {{England-cricket-bio-1910s-stub