Cricket's Historians

Historians Dig Deeper revised ACS Guide to First-Class Cricket in Australia. His book For Club and Country details the biographies of Test cricketers with Melbourne connections and he has also written on club cricket in Victoria. Alf Batchelder is one of a group of researchers and authors who are involved in the projects connected to the Melbourne Cricket Club library and museum. No less than ten of his publications are listed in Post Padwick , all of them directly or indirectly featuring the MCG. The Yorker , which was published from 1993 to 2003, was a magazine which contained very useful cricket book reviews, as well as historical articles relating to the MCG. For example an abridged version of James Ricci’s ‘MCG Curators’ was published in the magazine. The General Editor was John Owen. Philip Derriman, originally a journalist in England, joined the Sydney Morning Herald . His first major cricket book was The Grand Old Ground , being the history of Sydney Cricket Ground. This was followed by True to the Blue the history of the NSW Cricket Association and, among other works, a biography of Don Tallon. Bernard Whimpress is the curator of the museum at the Adelaide Oval. He is the founding editor of Baggy Green , the Journal of Australian Cricket, which began publication in 1998. He was written a number of books including Clem Hill’s Reminiscences and a biography of Ernie Jones in the Lives in Cricket Series. A.’Alf ’ B.M.James has written and published numerous works, most of which are of a statistical nature. One of his early projects, entitled Averages & Results of Australian First-class Cricket was issued in several volumes, the first covering 1850-51 to 1914-15 came out in 1985. Generally his publications are in limited editions, some limited to as few as four or five copies. Post Padwick lists 15 titles. Charlie Wat, like Alf James, tends to plough his own furrow. His publications, under the imprint Cricket Stats Publications, were statistical, many of them being updated on an annual basis. Examples are Test Records of Australian Players ; The LOI Record of the Australian Players ; Australian First-class Season; Register of Australian Cricketers . His first publications came out in the 1980s. Many of course are superseded by information on 291