Cricket's Historians

The Booming Market for Cricket Books multi-volume Australian history. The first volume – The Formative Years of Australian Cricket 1803-1893 – appeared in 1987 and ran to 344 pages. Pollard had covered much of the ground in his earlier writings, but the new work gave more detail and is well illustrated. Volume Two – The Turbulent Years of Australian Cricket 1893-1917 came out later the same year, whilst The Bradman Years. Australian Cricket 1918-1948 was published in 1988 and the final volume From Bradman to Border. Australian Cricket 1948- 1989 first appeared 1990. A fifth volume, Highest, Most and Best. Australian Cricket Statistics mainly by Ross Dundas, tied in the four history volumes. Ross Lloyd Dundas, born in Mullumbimby, New South Wales in September 1953, might be considered Australia’s first professional cricket statistician. He was trained as a computer operator and as such became interested in creating programmes to deal with cricket statistics. He was involved in the operation of the electronic scoreboard at Sydney in 1983 and since 1992 has been a consultant to the Australian Cricket Board as its official statistician. His Complete Book of Australian Test Records 1877- 1987 appeared in 1987. This work has been updated on several occasions since. The study of cricket’s history had developed into a subject on its own in Australia. In 1983 Patrons, Players and The Crowd : The Phenomenon of Indian Cricket was published by Longmans in 1980, the author being Richard Cashman, who was at the time an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. He was born in June 1940 at Hornsby, New South Wales, educated at North Sydney Boys’ High School and the University of Sydney, Monash University and Duke University, USA. He then moved as Assistant Professor to the University of Rochester, New York, before transferring to New South Wales in 1972. He edited, with Michael McKernan Sport : Money, Morality and the Media in 1982. Australian Cricket Crowds and ‘Ave a Go, yer Mug! both appeared in 1984 and ten other titles have appeared under his name in more recent years. From 2004 he was Adjunct Professor, University of Technology, Sydney – an honorary position. Another historian living in Australia who researched outside the 255