Nyren, who had no recognised literary skill, collaborated with the eminent Shakespearean scholar Charles Cowden Clarke to produce his work.
[2] The first edition of the full book was published by Effingham Wilson of the Royal Exchange, London in June 1833, and was reviewed by the Rev.
In addition, a handwriting analysis verified that neither Nyren nor Cowden Clarke wrote the manuscript, which is believed to have been the work of a professional copyist using a steel-nib pen.
[9] Much of historical, social and literary value can be gleaned from Nyren's work in which his essential purpose was to provide biographical information about the players whom he knew and remembered.
[12] Although John Nyren was at pains to show undue respect, almost amounting to obsequious fawning where social superiors were concerned (especially the unsavoury Lord Frederick Beauclerk), he tells of his father "maintaining an opinion with great firmness against the 3rd Duke of Dorset and Sir Horatio Mann and being proved right".
[12] But while his father reportedly stood up to aristocrats, John Nyren himself resorted to "social grovelling" via the addition to his text of "ingratiating remarks addressed to the great and powerful".
[13] The Memoranda seems to have been added hastily and is not generally seen as providing much value,[14] but it does include the following:[15] Several years since (I do not recollect the precise date) a player, named White, of Ryegate (sic), brought a bat to a match, which being the width of the stumps, effectually defended his wicket from the bowler : and, in consequence, a law was passed limiting the future width of the bat to 4¼ inches.
While Nyren, a boy at the time of the incident in 1771, may have thought that White was cheating, it is now believed that he forced an issue as the modern straight bats were a recent innovation, replacing the original hockey-stick shape, and no standard dimensions had as yet been agreed.
[17] Unless new sources of information about Georgian cricket should come to light, "nothing could hope to replace the charm of the account of those great days handed down to us by John Nyren".
[18] Harry Altham pointed out that the book was written some forty to fifty years after the zenith of Hambledon and so "it is not to be wondered at" that Nyren was often "vague as to detail and very sparing of date and place".
For example, Nyren is the first writer to mention boundaries in a cricketing context, although it meant something different then as they were parallel lines in single wicket matches used to define the limits of the outfield.
In addition, he criticised Nyren's work and pointed out the plagiarism that is evident in the part called The Young Cricketer's Tutor.
[29] In 1801, Thomas Boxall published Rules and Instructions for Playing at the Game of Cricket and this was "the first attempt to set laws, methods and tactics down on paper".
[30] In 1816, the writer John Baxter published Instructions and Rules for Playing the Noble Game of Cricket under the name of William Lambert.