Book Review -Arthur Owen Jones

 

07/09

Arthur Owen Jones (1872–1914)

England Captain, Gentleman Amateur, and the Fragility of Edwardian Greatness

Anthony David Davies. Independently published. 2026. Softback £6.99 68 pages

Arthur Jones (often referred to as A. O. Jones), is one of the legendary figures of Notts history. Scorer of 20,244 first-class runs for the county @33.02 he lies eleventh in the list of all-time runs scorers for Notts in first-class cricket. Furthermore his 296 versus Gloucestershire in 1903 remains the highest individual score by a Notts batsman at Trent Bridge.

This short book, written by his second cousin, three times removed, attempts to tell Jones’ story based on the social world of pre-WWI Britain. It contains no photographs and the only illustration is on the front cover and is split into 15 short sections which at times are written with too many repetitions.

Arthur was born on 16th August 1872. Jones’ father (Rev. John Cartwright Jones) was rector of Shelton, a small Notts village, eight miles south of Newark. The Jones’ family lineage can be traced to the Dolgellau and Barmouth areas in Merionethshire in North Wales. His birth in the Shelton church rectory however ensured his qualification for Notts CCC. Unfortunately, his father died before Arthur reached the age of three.

His widowed mother Mary with nine children relocated to Bedfordshire. Because of his challenging upbringing Arthur developed, according to the author “a controlled and methodical approach to life”. He was schooled at Bedford Modern, Market Bosworth Grammar and then Jesus College, Cambridge where he won a cricket blue in 1893.

Although it mentions in the book that Arthur was an excellent fielder in the gully position, no reference is made of the fact that he was also an occasional wicket-keeper and bowled serviceable leg-breaks. His 294 first-class wickets @32.13 puts him in 46th position in the leading wicket-takers for the county. Jones’ 489 catches puts him top of the table of catches by fieldsmen in Notts history.

In addition to his excellent cricket pedigree, Jones played for Leicester Tigers RUFC for over a decade, captained them and was their first player to reach 500 points. He also appeared for Bedford RUFC and Notts (now Nottingham) RUFC. The sporting polymath then became an international rugby referee.

There is a chapter on the 1907 championship season which Jones captained. There is no reference to the famous bowling pair Hallam and Wass nor the fact that Notts went unbeaten throughout the season. Jones was in fact Notts captain for 15 seasons from 1900-1914. An amateur throughout his career he hardly missed a game for years until ravaged by illness in his last two seasons. As the book alludes to, unlike most amateurs, he did not have particularly lucrative employment outside the game being quoted as being an insurance salesman on the 1911 census.

As a result of his championship winning exploits, Jones was made captain of the MCC Ashes tour of 1907-08. He missed the first three tests due to contracting pneumonia and England lost the series by four matches to one. His record at international level was modest, scoring 291 runs @13.85 in 12 Tests. His original selection for England in 1899 was undoubtedly influenced by Jones being the crack fielder of his generation. However the author thought although Jones was acknowledged within Notts cricket that the fact that he missed three tests through no fault of his own meant that Jones will never be mentioned as one of the greats of the games. “His appointment as England captain was earned through judgement and discipline. His perceived shortcomings arose largely from circumstances beyond his control. Yet history, indifferent to such distinctions, rendered its verdict nonetheless.”

Jones was never quite the same again. Jones, a heavy smoker (not mentioned in the book) contracted tuberculosis in the early 1910s and after catching a severe chill playing in Manchester in 1913, hardly played for the remainder of the season and only appeared six times in 1914. His health continued to deteriorate and he went to live in a sanatorium in the New Forest. He died at his brother’s house in Dunstable on 21st December 1914 aged 42 during the early stages of WW1. His death passed by without a lot of publicity nationally.

“The public figure who had once lived in view of grandstands and committees ended his life within a family interior, cared for privately, and largely beyond the gaze of the institutions that once had elevated him.”

Jones left £202 17s 6d to his widow Lily (equating to approximately £21,000 in 2026) – not a vast sum of money. “His long illness, and the narrowing of his working life that followed, almost certainly eroded whatever financial stability he might otherwise have enjoyed”.

Notts CCC raised a subscription and also paid for a headstone on his grave in Dunstable.

The book could have been so much better with more research. Jones must have been an excellent captain and “man manager” to skipper a team of hard-nosed professionals for so long. The Notts team in the Edwardian era was atypical compared to the majority of championship teams as it often comprised ten paid men plus Jones. This important point is not covered at all in the publication.

Its strengths are the details about Jones’ early life and his latter life when illness gripped him. However the author clearly did not really want to write a full-blown sporting biography. He uses his distant relative as he states in his summary as a “study of leadership, class, memory and the uneasy relationship between fame and forgetting in Edwardian society”.

19/06/2026

Seventh Heaven

Inside Nottinghamshire's 2025 Rothesay County Championship Triumph

Dave Bracegirdle. Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club. 2026. Softback £18.00 137 pages

 

Dave Bracegirdle, who is well known to all Notts supporters, has put together a blow-by-blow account of last season's championship triumph.

 

The title of the book alludes to the fact that it was Notts' seventh championship title in the modern era (i.e. since 1890). The book is written in diary form going through each day of Notts' championship season chronologically. Transcripts of player/coaching staff interviews made by Dave at the close of each day's play plus titbits of what was going on within and outside the commentary box add to the story.

 

The excellent well written reports on each game are much more detailed than that to be found in the Notts Cricket Annual - adding much more colour to what happened during the memorable season. Reading them immediately after the aftermath of the recent heavy loss against Somerset certainly cheered me up. There are however no stats so anybody purchasing or reading this book in the future will have to reference other sources to glean this information. The book concentrates totally on the championship; no reference is given to any of Notts' 2025 white ball action.

 

There are 12 pages of a good array of colour photos included, most have not been published before. Unfortunately no photo credits are provided.

 

The book comes highly recommended to any Notts supporter, championship titles don't come along that often. Just ask any Somerset supporter!

MAG

19/11/2024

Charlie Shore

Shore Whipped-in A Jobbing Professional by Stephen Musk

What Trent Bridge Heritage say about Shore here