The AIF Cricket Team: A Retrospective
Martin Chandler |Published: 2025
Pages: 91
Author: Cardwell, Ronald
Publisher: The Cricket Publishing Company
Rating: 4.5 stars
In two days time it is Remembrance Day, marking 107 years since the armistice that brought an end to the Great War. It is a date that as important now as it was in 1980, the date chosen by Ronald Cardwell to release his first book, The AIF Cricket Team, privately published in a signed and numbered limited edition of 200 copies.
According to the foreword contributed by long time politician The Honourable John Faulker Cardwell has subsequently been involved in the publication a further 142 books and monographs of which he has written or edited 79. These are figures I wasn’t previously aware of and, slightly to my disappointment, inform me I am lot further from having a full set of Cardwells than I thought I was.
One I do have is that 1980 book, one of the first ‘collectors items’ I ever acquired. It is typical Cardwell, dealing as it does with an area of cricket history no previous writer/researcher had spent a great deal of time on.
There won’t be many who have turned to this review without knowing what the AIF were all about, but a brief explanation might be useful. The acronym stands for Australian Imperial Forces. The cricket team were put together for the start of the English summer of 1919 and went on to play 34 matches here, after which they travelled to South Africa and played ten more there, and if that wasn’t enough they then played three more matches in Australia. It was February of 1920 before the 14 core members of the side were finally able to go home.
Of those 47 matches the AIF won 25, and lost just four. All who appeared for them were excellent cricketers, but the best known remain Jack Gregory, Herb Collins and Bert Oldfield. Other Test cricketers were ‘Nip’ Pellew and Johnny Taylor, and in addition Charlie Kelleway, initially captain before giving way to Collins, played in six matches at the start of the tour and Hammy Love appeared once.
The format of the 1980 book is pretty much what you would expect. It begins with the story of how the AIF Cricket Team came together, there are some brief biographies and, not surprisingly, the largest part of the book comprises reports on those 47 matches. Those are followed by a comprehensive set of stats and a selection of scorecards from the more important fixtures.
At first blush I suppose the question ‘why another book on the same subject?’ is going to spring to mind. The answer to that is straightforward. Cardwell has spent the last 45 years researching cricket history, and quite apart from a continuing interest in the tour and those involved in it some of his subsequent projects have brought him back into contact with the AIF.
In the course of his post 1980 research journey Cardwell has picked up much new material on the AIF and it is that which is showcased in The AIF Cricket Team: A Retrospective. It is a completely new book, not a rewrite or new edition.
This one begins with an interesting account of how the original book came into being in the first place, and Cardwell also gives due credit to those researchers, and there are several of them, whose books on the AIF or aspects of it have found their way into print in the years that have passed since his first book.
What you don’t get this time round are any match reports demonstrating that, not entirely surprisingly, Cardwell remains satisfied that he had located all the necessary material on those half a century ago. By far the bulk of the new book is taken up with biographical details of the AIF players and photographs that have come to light since 1980. It is of course evident to anyone with the slightest interest in any sort of research that the internet has revolutionised that process, and Cardwell has no doubt amassed a good deal of his new information from online sources.
But in truth Cardwell takes researching a lot further than that. An inveterate interviewer the best of his new material has, as ever, come from talking to those with personal knowledge and memories, and he has certainly put in the hard yards to track down all the information that he can. One man illustrates that better than any other, Harry Heath. Heath made a single appearance for the AIF, against Oxford University in the fifth match of the tour.
Aged 33 at the time of the match, his First Class debut, South Australian Heath made just two more First Class appearances, for his state in 1923/24. He died in Edinburgh in 1967, so far distant from his place of birth, but that didn’t put Cardwell off travelling to Scotland from Sydney a couple of years ago in order to track down the story* of the most peripheral member of the AIF’s playing strength.
If The AIF Cricket Team: A Retrospective proves one thing it is that just because a writer has published a project doesn’t mean that his job is finished. Ronald Cardwell is well aware of that, and thanks to his refusal/inability to ever contemplate closure the cricket world will, on Tuesday of this week, learn a great deal more about what remains by far the most interesting non-Test tour ever undertaken.
The book is available from Roger Page and, naturally from this publisher, there is a separate leather bound limited edition signed by Cardwell, Faulkner, Kelleway’s grandson, Greg Dyer and Air Commodore Grant Pinder, the President of The Australian Defence Forces Cricket Association. That said anyone interested will have to get in quickly as the limitation is only 19, the number of men who, at some point, turned out for the tourists.
*A footnote promises us another Cardwell for 2026, a full biography of Heath.
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