James Pycroft
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James Pycroft (born 1813, Geyers House, Wiltshire, died 1895-03-10, Brighton, Sussex) is chiefly known for writing The Cricket Field, one of the earliest books about cricket, published in 1851. Pycroft mythologised cricket as a noble, manly and essentially British activity and one unknown to the perfidious frog, kraut and dagoe ('Cricket is essentially Anglo-Saxon, ... Foreigners have rarely imitated us. English settlers everywhere play at cricket; but of no single club have we heard that dieted either with frogs, saur-kraut or macaroni). His hagiography favourably compared the virtues of Victorian cricket with the disgraceful state of play at the turn of the century where 'Lord’s was frequented by men with book and pencil, betting as openly and professionally as in the ring at Epsom, and ready to deal in the odds with any and every person of speculative propensities’.
