Talk:List of English cricketers (1787–1825)

Merging articles into this list

As I mentioned here, there are a number of stubs on cricketers that would be more usefully merged into this article. But when someone (who isn't important) added this information they did an inartful job. What I believe would be best would be to convert this list into a table, & the content of the merged articles incorporated thusly:

Cricketer	When active	Comments
Chitty	August 1800	Played for a Surrey team, known as the Twelve of Surrey, in a match at Lord's against a team representing the rest of England, known as the Fourteen of England.

Note how succinct this entry is, with only the basic facts & a source so the interested reader can look for further details. Information about the teams should be presented in articles on those teams, if they are notable, or about the game itself. This emphasis on brevity assumes that Wikipedia is an introduction to knowledge, a place to start research, & not a compendium of all information on notable subjects. The first is an achievable goal; the second is impossible, even for a team of experts because knowledge is always growing, accumulating new facts & expert insights. -- llywrch (talk) 17:54, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

There might be an argument for including the birth and death dates as well (or that fact that they are unknown in this case). But otherwise, yes - you've been, in my view, more than generous with the details we have. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:06, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• Strongest support of merging every substub linked on this page, and those on the pre-1787 article as well. It is an utter embarrassment that pages like Abbott (English cricketer) exist. Any individual whose name is not known cannot be notable. There are a number of articles like Thomas Razell that also fail GNG and fail NATHLETE. Playing an amateur sport is not notable. What a farce that playing a couple games of a sport 200+ years ago means that there should be an article about them, despite knowing nothing else, only that a team roster was in some database. Reywas92^Talk 06:48, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

• Once we have Chitty merged, which I'm likely to do in the next 24 hours or so, I'll begin to see if there's a way to work through these and consider which ones should be merged. I imagine this will need to go to the cricket project, although in general terms I agree with Reywas92 Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:32, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

• Would this work as a possible layout by the way? It's just labour intensive and there are significant issues with sourcing - which is something we need to come back to at some point. For readability (and edibility) I think a table for each letter might be more effective than one massive table? Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:15, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Cricketer	When active	Comments	Ref
Abbott	1802–1804	Two matches for MCC
Benjamin Aislabie	1808–1841	56 matches for a range of teams, with 20 appearances for MCC. He was Secretary of MCC between 1822 and 1842 and President in 1823/24
Allen	1820	Two matches forCambridge University
W. Allen	1787–1793	Three matches, including one for Essex and one for Middlesex
Stephen Amherst	1783–1795	31 appearances, mainly for Kent county cricket teams. An important patron of the game in Kent
Charles Andrew	1814–1824	Six matches, five of which were for Sussex county cricket teams
Charles Anguish	1788–1795	32 appearances, mainly for MCC
Annett	1788–1792	Six appearances, including four for Hampshire county cricket teams
William Ashby	1808–1830	45 appearances, mainly for Kent county cricket teams
Ashurst	1802	One appearance
Thomas Assheton Smith I	1787–1796	43 appearances, mainly for MCC and Hampshire county cricket teams
Thomas Assheton Smith II	1798–1820	40 appearances, mainly for England, MCC and Hampshire county cricket teams
Henry Hervey Aston	1786–1793
Robert Ayling	1796	Two appearances for Kent county cricket teams
William Ayling	1800–1826	22 appearances, 14 of which were for England sides
James Aylward	1773–1797	107 appearances, mainly for Hampshire county cricket teams, Kent county cricket teams and England

Looks good to me. I agree that there should be a table per letter. I see that the earlier list to 1786 has a table by date and it is okay. One question I have is whether tables of this sort should be sortable but that would mean having more than one key variable and I don't think there is, really. Looking at the A's above, I would merge Abbott, both the Allens, Ashurst and Robert Ayling. Well done. Scribbles by The Scribbler (talk) 21:16, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

I've dropped this part of the table in, but it's not a quick job. I'm really not sure of the way to do sourcing for this and there needs to be a discussion at the cricket project which I shall start in a moment. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:46, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Permastub list

I have compiled a list of entries that should be our priority for merging. They were all tagged with the confusingly-named {{nostub}} that indicates permastub topics that have so little coverage that they "are not likely to ever expand". In other words, these are the shortest and most uncovered cricketer articles we have. – Finnusertop (talk · contribs) 16:09, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

List of early English cricketers to 1786

• Thomas Land (cricketer) – this can be expanded
• Stephen Amherst – article can definitely be expanded (played over 30 matches and was a patron)
• Mills (Surrey cricketer, 1778) – apparently played in at least ten matches so can be expanded (list of sources but no citations)
• Tim Coleman (18th-century cricketer) – has been merged
• Edmund Chapman – has been merged
• Ellis (London cricketer) – borderline; reluctant to merge this one
• Wakeland (London cricketer) – has been merged
• George Oldner – has been merged
• Collins (1744 Surrey cricketer) – has been merged
• Killick (Kent cricketer) – has been merged
• Potter (Kent cricketer) – has been merged
• Wakelin (Kent cricketer) – has been merged
• Allen (Middlesex cricketer) – has been merged
• Burchwood (Kent cricketer) – has been merged
• Cheeseman (Sussex cricketer) – has been merged
• Gascoigne (London cricketer) – has been merged
• Saunders (Berkshire cricketer) – has been merged
• Humphreys (Surrey cricketer) – has been merged
• William King (London cricketer) – has been merged
• Mathews (All-England cricketer) – has been merged
• Wilden (Kent cricketer) – has been merged
• Stone (1751 Kent cricketer) – has been merged
• Muddle (cricketer) – has been merged
• Smailes (Surrey cricketer) – has been merged

List of English cricketers (1787–1825)

• Rimmington (Kent cricketer) – can be expanded and needs citations
• Richard Stanford (Kent cricketer) – can be expanded and needs citations
• Samuel Cockerill – can be expanded and needs citations
• Charles Ellis Bayly – has been merged
• Thomas Lloyd (cricketer) – has been merged

1920s

• James Crosbie Smith – can be expanded and needs citations
• Alexander Wilkes – can be expanded and needs citations

Regards – Finnusertop (talk · contribs) 16:09, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Looks a good starter for ten but I would take Amherst out. Apparently he made over thirty top-class appearances and was a patron, so there must be plenty about him in the sources listed on his page. Thanks. Scribbles by The Scribbler (talk) 16:26, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

To make a start somewhere, I chose Wakeland and Oldner who were team mates and redirected them to List of early English cricketers to 1786 where they are already listed. I expanded their entries a little. I'd appreciate someone please checking these changes and let me know if I'm away up the wrong street. Thanks. Scribbles by The Scribbler (talk) 16:53, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello, Finnusertop. This is finished now, with help from User:Reywas92. All items have been actioned as noted above. Where there is scope for expansion, I've removed the not-a-stub flag which seemed to be the problem and placed a citations needed banner on the article instead. In fact, the ones in this list are by no means the shortest and most uncovered. All these had in common was the not-a-stub thingy. There are loads of permanent micro-stubs like Chitty and those are the real problem. Thanks. Scribbles by The Scribbler (talk) 20:11, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Sounds good, Scribbles by The Scribbler. I'm going to go through the ones you left and see which of them should be properly marked as stubs now that the "nostub"s are gone. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:52, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Revisiting this

Is there still a general feeling that merging into this list is a suitable solution? I'm specifically thinking about those about whom we only have a surname or an initial and a surname in the first instance. @Llywrch:, @Reywas92:, @Finnusertop: as those who took part in the discussion previously. Blue Square Thing (talk) 12:57, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to deletion, either. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:48, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I prefer merging to outright deletion, because merging provides a chance for someone to add a note stating to the effect "nothing more is known about this person". (And yes, some joker will possibly tag that note with "citation needed". But this note offers a clue to anyone researching the topic that if there is further information it will require a lot of work & luck to find it.) -- llywrch (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, if we don't know their name, it's a farce to call them notable. Include a note mentioning the little we do know in the table if you really want, but no separate articles. Reywas92^Talk 21:15, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks all of you. I'm working through the Bs just now and will come back to this after I've finished that list, but in almost every case I'd say a redirect is in order. The task of trying to get an actual first-class cricketer deleted is beyond my patience and really not worth the hassle it causes. Even suggesting redirection causes apoplexy amongst some users it seems...

If there are any other comments from anyone I'd appreciate hearing them. Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:04, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I've just placed 29 mergeto tags on the As and Bs that fall under the sort of criteria that's been discussed. I'd rather do that initially and see what happens. The rationale is WP:MERGEREASON 3 - very short text. In some cases there is some synthesis from primary scorecards on the original articles. As I've worked through I've found nine to PROD based on not having played at the top-level as well. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:40, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

All the As and Bs and now merged and I've gone through and verified the list as far as I can - it appears to be about as correct as it can be, although the databases have variance on some issues. A number of other players were added. I'll go through and place merge tags on the next few letters in the next couple of days. There are probably a few copy edit issues that might be worth dealing with at some point. Blue Square Thing (talk) 12:22, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, these are all done now. Blue Square Thing (talk) 18:44, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

A hopeless undertaking?

I think we are making a rod for our own backs in trying to make something of this horrific list and I would seriously ask if it should be deleted. The same applies to all the successive lists from 1826 to 1863. They were not thought out by their creator and they were abandoned. At best, this list should be broken up into manageable timespans – if anyone can be bothered to find out the dates for every single player and check if every single player has been listed.

Having looked around for better ways to redirect the permastubs (I like that word), I discovered that the season reviews have debutant sections and so I've given Chitty and Waller (also in this list) their own debutant sub-sections in 1800 English cricket season. That is a much neater way of handling them, giving them two to three lines, than trying to create and format one huge table or twenty variable size tables in a list article that no one will ever want to read, let alone edit.

What do you think? Thanks. Scribbles by The Scribbler (talk) 02:12, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

I quite like the idea of using those articles as the lists are unwieldy and serve little purpose. It would make more sense to do it as a table like proposed above rather than giving them dedicated sections. Many of these people, not only those whose name isn't even known, are not notable, though a row in a table could be okay. Nearly every one of these articles was created by a now-blocked user, with little improvement since then, and I see no reason why this decision to mass-produce permastubs should stand. They are simply copied from a CricketArchive, and WP shouldn't just replicate that short of substantive sources to pass WP:GNG. Reywas92^Talk 19:24, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

I think they all meet the terms of the cricket project's SNG, though my understanding of these things is not complete, but few of them meet the GNG. I would certainly expect them to have the significant coverage that the GNG requires. A line on a scorecard, as with Chitty, is not the basis for an article. Scribbles by The Scribbler (talk) 19:40, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Hopper merge proposal

I'm proposing we merge James Hopper (cricketer) into here - and copy the entry from here to the 1826- list as well.

There are no real biographical details for Hopper - his name is given in various sources as John or James - someone has settled on James for an unexplained reason, possibly using one of those sources. The 1907 History of Kent CCC gives him the initial G, so the name itself seems speculative. Beyond that we know little if anything - he may have been from Lenham or Leeds, but Carlaw (source - page 230) has found little if anything about him.

I certainly don't think we have enough for a full biography as it stands. Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:26, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Adding Samson Baker to this. Carlaw (p.25-26) raises major doubts about the identity of this chap. The forename is speculative at best - some sources list him as J Baker or JB for example and he may be James Baker (English cricketer). A merge is the best option give the uncertainty. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:23, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Both merges completed using notes to add detail to the article. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:05, 13 June 2020 (UTC)