CHEEKY: Little Aussie extrovert Ginger Meggs’ creator Jim Bancks named several of Ginger’s best mates after his favourites at Waverley CC where he was often to be found on a summer Saturday in the ’20s and early ’30s. Bancks particularly admired Test champion Alan Kippax who he dubbed ‘Coogan’ … always up for a game

SOLID CITIZENS: Bill Woodfull (left) and Alan Kippax. Woodfull refused a knighthood as it was to be for his services to sport rather than schoolteaching. For years Kippax had a highly successful sports store in Sydney in Martin Place, befriending young ones and encouraging them to play the greatest of all games

HOT TICKET: The 1930–31 New Year Test in Sydney was scheduled for five days, but barely lasted two, Australia’s luck with the toss all-important as they enjoyed the superior batting conditions. After the Friday’s play was lost to rain, the visiting West Indians were twice bowled out cheaply, only one player making 25. Just on 40 000 witnessed the game

RECLUSIVE: High-profile expressman Jack Gregory preferred not to give interviews after a bad experience with a journalist outside the rooms at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1926

POPULAR: Cricketer-cartoonist Arthur Mailey delighted generations of cricket lovers with his witty appreciations on play. His cartoons live on in a celebrated series of between-the-wars booklets

SIMPLY STUNNING: For all his headlining scores, Don Bradman’s off-field contributions to cricket were equally significant. For thirty years and more he averaged three committee meetings a week at state and national levels and into his seventies, even helped broker a peace deal between Kerry Packer and the Australian Cricket Board

Ken Piesse/Vidler Family Collection

BEATEN FIRST-UP: Australia’s XII were under the captaincy of Don Bradman for the first time for the opening Test at the Gabba in 1936–37. Having lost 3-22 in the first forty minutes, Gubby Allen’s touring Englishmen staged one of the great Ashes comebacks, to win by 322 runs

TOUGH AS TEAK: ‘Nun of oos liik it,’ said Maurice Leyland of facing genuine pace, ‘a few of oos don’t let on.’

PRIDE OF BRADFORD: The queues for Len ’Utton’s autograph rivalled anyone in world cricket, including the Don

HARD SCHOOL: Fitzroy’s Maurice Sievers returned match figures of six for 60 in the third Test in front of world-record crowds in Melbourne in 1936–37, but was never chosen again

Ray Nicholls

WELLINGTON GREENTOP: The Basin Reserve wicket is barely discernible as Bill ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly attacks the New Zealanders in the one-off Test in autumn, 1946, the first between the two Trans-Tasman neighbours. O’Reilly took eight for 33. The inaugural Test lasted just eight hours and it was a generation before the two teams were to meet again in an official Test

BIG JAKE: Jack Iverson flicked his leg breaks and off breaks with disarming accuracy in the 1950–51 Ashes summer, before losing his confidence and disappearing back into the anonymity of sub-district ranks in suburban Melbourne

SHORT-SIGHTED: ‘The Fitzroy urchin’ Neil Harvey was Australia’s finest batsman throughout the 1950s. Amazingly he could never read a scoreboard and was once asked by an optometrist, ‘Who leads you out to bat, son?’

Harvey family collection

THE NEXT BRADMAN: Ian Craig never worried about the ‘next Bradman’ tag. He was thrilled to even be compared with the great man. He remains Australia’s youngest ever Test captain at twenty-two and played through into his mid-thirties before a meeting with a young Jeff Thomson …

CRICKET STRONGHOLD: In Bridgetown, Barbados, a triple-century stand between two West Indians prompted a fierce mid-match altercation between the two Australian team leaders Ian Johnson and Keith Miller which all but resulted in blows

WORLDBEATER: Richie Benaud was able to fulfill true all-rounder status with both NSW and Australia in the late ’50s and early ’60s, his leg spinners and flippers a most menacing cocktail as Australia regained the Ashes in emphatic style in 1958–59

HOSTILE: Ron Gaunt. He and his also near-express West Australian pace partner Des Hoare were known as ‘Haunt and Gore’

STAY AT HOME: As he grew older, John Arlott rarely experienced summers beyond the British Isles. He found the heat and humidity Down Under particularly exhausting

DRAGGER: In the days of the back foot no-ball rule, NSW giant Gordon Rorke often seemed to be bowling from nineteen or twenty yards, so huge was his delivery stride

HE AVERAGED 100 IN ENGLAND: Ever-smiling Bill Johnston once aggregated 100 runs for just once out in England – and fun-loving captain Lindsay Hassett didn’t let him bat again, so as not to risk spoiling his average …

THIRD SELECTOR: Peter Burge was just twenty-five when he became an Australian selector. In mid-tour to South Africa in 1957–58, he had to vote on the future of out-of-form national captain Ian Craig

STAR-RATER: A cutting from the old Sporting Life magazine … Soon afterwards champion all-rounder Ron Archer first represented Australia, aged nineteen, and was destined to captain his country before a knee injury ruined his career

LEFT-FIELD CHOICE: Leading into the Ashes summer of 1954–55, Ian Johnson was a surprise selection ahead of Keith Miller as Australia’s new captain, his conservative, non-controversial ways making him a favourite with the influential Sir Donald Bradman

CRICKET OR GOLF: As a sixteen-year-old Bobby Simpson was seriously contemplating a career in golf before being selected by New South Wales for the first time at Sheffield Shield level

EPIC STAND: The Adelaide Oval scoreboard after the massive, record-breaking 462 fourth-wicket stand between David Hookes and Wayne Phillips which floored the Tasmanians in 1986–87. They carried the score from 3-181 to 3-643 declared in a runaway victory

South Australian Cricket Association

CRICKET KNIGHT: Globetrotting Garry Sobers was the prime attraction, again, when the Rest of the World toured Australia as a replacement for the shunned South Africans in 1970–71

FORTUNATE: South African Tony Greig soon after joining the Sussex groundstaff in 1967. He made a century on debut – but could easily have been given out lbw before he’d scored

DENNIS THE MENACE: Dennis Lillee was an intimidating presence for batsmen – and umpires – right through until his final ‘international’ at Lilac Hill at the age of fifty

IMPRESSED: John Inverarity liked the batting of the champion Springbok Barry Richards … ‘Yep, he can play a bit …’

West Australian Cricket Association

MR MAGOO: Mike Smith could barely see a thing without his thick gold-rimmed glasses. Once he picked up a hair dryer and started speaking into it as if it was a telephone …

HILLY: Merv Hughes still answers to the nickname of ‘Hilly’ after being set up leading into his first game for Victoria at Geelong’s Kardinia Park in 1981

BLOND BOMBSHELL: Shane Warne during his initial year in Victoria’s state squad alongside fellow spinners Paul Jackson and Peter McIntyre

Cricket Victoria

OLD WARRIOR: Frank Tyson walks with the help of a walking stick these days, but at his top, no-one was faster in the immediate post-war years. He carries one of the great nicknames: ‘Typhoon’

FAIRYTALE DEBUT: Ashes debutant, nineteen-year-old Ashton Agar during his first over in Test cricket at Trent Bridge in 2013. His selection had been kept secret until the morning of the match. On the second day, with Australia collapsing, he made 98, a record score for a Test No. 11

Terry Swingler

‘SMOKEY SELECTION’: Ashton Agar’s dramatic rise from unknown to Test status in 2013 sparked an extraordinary trail of publicity

Ken Piesse Collection

AMBASSADOR: The just-retired Ricky Ponting accepting the role of patron of the Australian Cricket Society in Melbourne in 2013. Addressing a young boy dressed in his whites he said, ‘I was just like you … keep loving the game … I wish you all the best.’

Wayne Ross/ACS

UNHAPPY: Having tangled with teammate Simon Katich, Michael Clarke left the rooms in a hurry in an extraordinary finale to Australia’s solitary victory of the 2008–09 home summer in Sydney

BACK IN FAVOUR: Having once said he had more chance of representing Australia at lawn bowls than cricket, Victorian legend Brad Hodge belatedly re-won a top-order place at Twenty20 level in 2014, six years after his previous appearance

Cricket Victoria

JOURNEYMAN: Twelve months after being told he was being axed by Cricket Victoria, Chris Rogers was back in the spotlight, having regained his Australian place … a classic story of a battler made good

STILL INVINCIBLE: An 85-year-old Neil Harvey in 2014

Susan Piesse