David Dunstan, "Wisden History"

David Dunstan

WISDEN HISTORY.

Captain Cook and . The review of the National Museum of , with its heartfelt yearning for the return of great-white-bloke stories, makes for rather vexing reading ..." Great-white-bloke history is bunk. We can do better. The Age 18 July 2003, Ann McGrath, director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the ANU.

Retired banker and horse breeder paid $425,000 for Donald Bradman's 1948 . On loan for public display, the cap is to do a tour of duty through , Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney for the 2003104 summer Test series. Source: Museum bags taxing piece of hi story The Australian 10 September 2003.

As if the oval were the wide world, we wait squinting with the gulls through the soft, suntan haze at the distant, lazy middle where the ball is bowled, blocked.

Soon in the baggy green will make the news with a lift of the red ball up over the barmy army into the cloudless blue.

Today success is all but guaranteed by the sweep and crack of cricket history, the triumphant Aussie book of Wisden. 1

When Steve and team step on to the hallowed ground wearing the traditional baggy green, they walk beside the legends of Chappell, Miller and Bradman and together they warm the stands, the bars and every last esky on the hill with the promise of still more glory.

58 Volume 31, number 1, May 2004

Such is the passion of the times, beyond the oval, across the nation, our libraries and museums have been refurbished in tribute to the wonder of the willow.

Here, by the glass display under electric light, we feel the hot, midday sun baking the baggy green of the Don at the MCG.

And when the last tired ball of the day is bowled, and the last Porn walks, sunburnt and elbow stiff, we park the warm beer, rise up, steady, then applaud long and solemn the early, crushing win,

As the Waugh boys head for the gate at days end, history's flag bearers, Wisden's witnesses, still crisp in their near clean whites, saluting the crowd, trophy stumps in one hand and in the other that cap, that baggy, green .

Perhaps some day the same baggy green will hang behind glass with the Don's, kept in shape by old newspaper with headlines from Christmas Island, Baghdad or Redfern.

1. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, an annual publication of worldwide cricket statistics.

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