Updates to History section
Some significant updates have been made to the History section of this website. The following paragraphs describe these changes.
When this site was overhauled in 2010, a fair amount of historical data that had been accumulated on the old site was not converted. It was always intended that this conversion would be carried out and this has now been done. At the same time, older scorebooks have been consulted and the result is that every 1st XI scorecard from 1984 onwards has now been published and can be found via the appropriate link.
Why 1984? Well, it was one of the most successful seasons in the Club's history, achieved without any professional support, and it seemed as good a start point as any. Along with the scorecards, full averages and statistical highlights can also be viewed for each year.
Another separate exercise has seen the building of a database, using a proprietary cricket statistical software package, to cover all 1st XI games and it is this data that has been used to produce the averages and statistical data mentioned above. This database currently covers the years from 1960 to 2012 and has allowed the production of cumulative averages for All Games for these years, as well as similar data for the Western Union and the SNCL.
It should be noted that the source data for this database comes from a couple of areas. All the scorebooks going back to 1972 do exist but before that, it has been necessary to access the resources of newspapers, such as the Greenock Telegraph and Glasgow Herald, as only a few scorebooks have been located. Inevitably this means that there are a few gaps in the data, such as in some cases all eleven members of the team are not listed. Partnership statistics are also impossible to produce for these years. Nonetheless, the averages that have been produced can in the main be viewed as being accurate.
A third strand of work has combined the data from 1960 to 2012 with the career data that was published in TC Riddell's monumental book 'Greenock Cricket Club Records' and its appendices, to provide the leading career batting and bowling records for the years 1885 to 2012. These make for some interesting reading.
What happens next? Work will now commence to produce the full statistics and scorecards for the seasons 1972 to 1983 and the plan is that they will be published in batches of 3 or 4 years at a time. No decision has yet been made as to what to do about years prior to that, due to the lack of scorebooks for some years as mentioned above. It is also hoped to add more years to the statistics database, initially going back to 1946, although the years immediately after the end of World War 2 are somewhat problematic as the lack of newsprint at that time means that some scorecards do not seem to have been printed.
Cricket is a game that has always been renowned for the array of statistics that can be produced for it and in this case it is hoped that the publication of this data will be of interest to those who have been watching, or indeed playing in, Greenock cricket for the years in question, and possibly to some others who didn't but who want to find out a bit more of the performances of some of Greenock's finest players.
Of undoubted interest will be the scorecards of the two Greenidge benefit games in 1990 and 1992. But who remembers the Darrin Ramshaw benefit game of 1991 in which for example a very young Justin Langer featured? Well, that scorecard has also been published. There are plenty of other gems to be found, featuring large partnerships and sudden collapses, great innings and fine bowling spells. Enjoy!
Inevitably, there will be some errors and typos in all of this data. Should you find anything that you think should be corrected, please send a message to Brian Papworth who will arrange for the necessary amendments to be made.
