Undertaking any large-scale project will produce its share of challenges and opportunities. It became clear at the outset that Tons of Runs may be a victim or beneficiary of its completeness: how many tons could be unearthed, transcribed and published; how accurate were the details pertaining to the centuries. Other than the centuries made throughout Australia in the last twenty years—co-inciding with the electronic era, and often recorded by contemporary edict—it was logical to assume that cricket club secretaries, historians and archivists could only supply Tons of Runs with archival data if previous office bearers had seen fit to record them. Retaining it is has proven to be another matter again, due to the loss of much Australian cricket history over the past 160 years. Theft, skull-duggery and the X-factor have played their part in loss, as have fire and floods.

Within the eight-field scoring template, common sense dictated that two fields, above all others, were mandatory for a listing to proceed: Surname and Team. The difficulty of tracking down unlisted opponents, while initially frustrating and time-consuming, was eventually overcome by substituting Unk/NR [unknown or not recorded] in the relevant field. Incorporating this design feature was critical, as it would have been the height of poor form to disqualify hard-fought batting milestones, purely because a club’s convention was not to record opponents, or due to any club’s worry that supplying this detail would be pure guesswork.

A surprising number of Australian cricket clubs maintain an internal system of registering the fact that a century has been made; but do so without detailing the actual score. Again, to disallow publishing cricketers’ feats on these grounds would seem overly harsh. And it would be especially harsh, in the advent of the remaining seven template fields having been supplied. The way forward was soon apparent: such instances would simply be recorded as 100+. This methodology, however, was adopted in full knowledge that a cricketer would occasionally be robbed of a big ton—on balance, better than not being listed at all! Being a national archival project, activity was geared toward making the publication inclusive, not exclusive. Various data-collection methods were undertaken in casting the net widely. Countless individuals, unsure if their club had sent in a submission, demonstrated their initiative by personally supplying details of centuries. The Tons of Runs website was custom-built for this purpose. Visitations to several libraries, including the Victorian State Library, proved a fruitful avenue of data-collection, and you never knock back what is found in old books. Cricket websites proved most useful, too, as did the contribution by enthusiastic cricketers, via their phone calls, tip-offs and referrals. The front line, of course, was the magnificent work donated by cricket clubs across the nation. One of the data-collection methods was trawling through old newspaper accounts. There was a time when the custom was to list surnames, but without initials. Numerous clubs—once their irreplaceable ‘knowledge bank’ of senior members had departed—struggled to provide cricketers’ initials. Excluding centurions on the grounds of ‘missing’ initials was never seriously considered.

In the club-generated spreadsheets delivered to Tons of Runs, approximately ten per cent of centurions’ listings lacked the exact season(s). Sometimes they were left blank; in other instances an estimate of the season was provided. While we happily accommodated the second scenario, a publisher has a different set of concerns to a reader. Leaving the season detail ‘blank’ would too easily be judged as an oversight or sloppy work, so the fallback position has been to insert a player’s career span. Cricketers have always moved around from club to club, while a Sheffield Shield player will relocate to another Australian State or Territory to exploit, or create, an opportunity for higher honours. Occasionally, like Brendan Nash from Brisbane’s Northern Suburbs District Cricket Club, the move is from one country to another. It is pleasing to see him doing so well at Test level for the West Indies. When a ‘name’ player relocates, it is an easy matter to ensure that his/her tally of tons appears under the one, uniform name— with the same initials and presented in the same order. But movement, when it relates to a player from the lower grades of the game, can present data-management difficulties. Having survived a myriad of issues related to cricketers’ initials, the experience will be most valuable when compiling future editions of Tons of Runs and Wicket-takers.

Every Test-match century up to the end of the 2007/08 season, on Australian soil, has been captured within Tons of Runs. No attempt, however, was made to outline the ground and city where the milestone occurred. It is also beyond the scope of the publication to outline, numerically, whether the century was made in the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth or Sixth Test. It is an additional source of pride that every century made prior to the 2008/09 season in Sheffield Shield/Pura Cup matches, since inception of the competition in 1892/93, has been captured within the publication.

The sole, listing criterion is adherence to an alphabetised presentation. In this manner, on any given page, the readership can reasonably expect to enjoy a full breadth of statistics pertaining to players of either sex, matches, conditions and formats. With any luck, your name may appear next to a favourite Test-match cricketer.