by Steven Lynch
Saturday, December 28, 2002

Australia has gone memorabilia-mad. You can't watch Channel 9 for more than half an hour without being assailed by Tony Greig, spruiking one of only 500 copies of a framed something-or-other from a recent match. Apparently all of them would be ideal for your bar or den (or, as Tony puts it in that South African drawl, "yore borr or dinn".

This instant-history stuff doesn't cut much ice with serious collectors, though. And a recently formed auction company in Melbourne is close to nailing down perhaps the ultimate in Australian cricket memorabilia: one of Don Bradman's baggy green caps.

Ludgrove's International is run by cricket-lover Michael Ludgrove, who cut his teeth with Christie's. Sharp-end cricket experience is provided by Graham Halbish, the former chief executive of the Australian Cricket Board. Their bulging contacts-books have unearthed a cap Bradman presented to the manager of the Indian touring team in 1947-48 (the season The Don made his 100th first-class hundred). It's the first Bradman baggy green to be offered for public sale, and is expected to fetch $A250,000 at auction soon.

An even holier grail, one of Bradman's caps from the "Invincibles" tour of 1948, is on the horizon too. "We could get half a million dollars for that," estimates the dapper Ludgrove with barely a hint of drool.

A visit to their office in the fashionable South Yarra district – near the haute couture of Chapel Street – reveals a state of organised chaos, as their first sporting auction approaches in February. Lots were spread out over the floor – a Keith Miller signed bat here, a Neil Harvey menu there – and you had to tread carefully to avoid trampling on Denis Compton's blazer or the baseball kit Bill Johnston wore in a benefit match in South Africa in 1949-50.

Then there's a box of baggy greens – one of Don Tallon's, and one that's so old that it says Advance Australia on the front instead of just Australia. Probably from the 1920s, I was told.

Two light-green boxes disgorged the napkin-rings presented by a grateful Bradman to those Invincibles. These were Arthur Morris's and Keith Miller's ... more gems for that upcoming sporting sale.

In the store-room next to a lifesize bronze of Bradman – the one that used to be in his garden in Adelaide – there was a car. "Wow ... Bradman's?" I wondered breathlessly. "Mine," lamented Michael Ludgrove. "I broke the door last night and can't get it out till it's fixed."

And finally ... at the bottom of a box of Arthur Morris's photos lurked a set of manila folders, with arguably the most intriguing prize of all.

They contain meticulously compiled ball-by-ball scoresheets of the 1948 and 1953 Ashes series, as well as the famous Victory Tests of 1945. This wasn't your average schoolboy scorebook – it's a detailed account of where every ball went, whether the batsman was beaten, whether the ball went in the air, chances missed, who fielded it, and so on. And all from a time when Bill Frindall was looking forward to shaving rather than avoiding it.

They were the handiwork of Lorna Smart, a young woman from Windsor in Berkshire who later moved to Surrey. It isn't a name familiar to most cricket historians – but perhaps it should be. Ludgroves know little about her, beyond the fact that she worked for the Ministry of Supplies (which probably explains how she managed to obtain copious amounts of paper) and obviously had a mathematical bent. Lorna seems to have given up serious scoring after the 1953 tour, but exchanged Christmas cards with Arthur Morris until she died in 1997.

As the years wore on the Ministry of Supplies seems to have supplied more coloured pencils, as her wagon-wheels become more sophisticated (complete with daggers to denote left-handers, etc etc). All in all it is a fascinating record of a long-gone era.

It's such a detailed record that an enterprising production company could even mock up a ball-by-ball account of the 1948 Invincibles' tour. Now there's an idea ...

Steven Lynch is editor of Wisden.com.

Do you know more about Lorna Smart? Please let us know on help@wisden.com. And if you want more details of Ludgroves sporting auctions, go to
www.ludgroves.com.

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd