Gerald Brodribb

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 and read classics and English at University College, Oxford, where his tutor was C.S. Lewis. He became a schoolmaster, and from 1956 to 1968 he owned and ran Hydneye House, a prep school in East Sussex.^[1]

Brodribb was a descendant of the Victorian actor Sir Henry Irving and a founder member of the Cricket Society. 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".^[2] Among his other famous works are Hit for Six, a compendium of the big-hitters in cricket, and The Croucher, a biography of the early twentieth-century cricketer Gilbert Jessop.

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.^[3] 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.^[4] His use of dowsing to locate archaeological sites was not always well received in the archaeological community, a fact that was highlighted when archaeological television programme Time Team excavated at Beauport Park.^[5]

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 (1976)

Archaeology

• Roman Brick and Tile. Stroud: Alan Sutton. 1987. ISBN 0-86299-363-6. (Available on Google Books)

References

1. "Arthur Gerald Norcott Brodribb, M.A., Ph.D." Society of Antiquaries of London. Archived from the original on 13 June 2011. Retrieved 8 February 2018.
2. "Obituary in Wisden 2000". Cricinfo. Retrieved 29 April 2006.
3. The Classis Britannica Bath-house at Beauport Park, East Sussex, 1988, Britannia Volume 19, p. 217.
4. Working papers, Battle Museum
5. "Time Team - All 4". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 27 January 2013.