Ian Maun was the Association’s Statistician and Historian of the Year for 2009, following the publication of the first volume of his series on cricket in the 18th century. Ian’s work From Commons to Lord’s – published by fellow Association member Roger Heavens – was also long-listed by the Cricket Society for its prestigious Book of the Year Award, with many regarding the book as one of the most important on cricket history in recent years.
Ian, who works in the Education Department at Exeter University, meticulously unearthed many new details about 18th-century cricket, researching newspapers, journals, letters and other documents housed in national and provincial collections, as well as other resources not previously consulted by cricket historians, including dictionaries, novels, plays and poems.
His research started when he was trying to understand the relationship of the exploits of the Hambledon Club to the cricket which had preceded the days of that illustrious club. What started out as a series of rough notes and jottings, disentangling what was fact and what was fiction, subsequently metamorphosed into a major research project resulting in the publication of a reference book providing a sharper and more complete picture of 18th-century cricket than had been achieved by many of the great scholars of cricket history. In particular, Ian discovered several hitherto unknown matches, as well as more than 200 references to cricket which had never been published.
Ian received the Statistician of the Year trophy from the President, M. J. K. Smith, before thanking several members of the Association for their assistance with his research, especially Roger Heavens, Martin Wilson and Peter Wynne-Thomas.