Bernard Whimpress one of Australia's top sports historians; Adelaide, cricket, football anchor wide literary outlook

South Australian sports historian Bernard Whimpress remained anchored in intense interest in his hometown Adelaide and its fostering of Australian rules football while extending his love of cricket to combining local club and other histories with international authoritative works such as the Official MCC Ashes Treasures. He also honed the words for city heritage book Adelaide Then and Now (bottom right).

Bernard Whimpress became one of Australia’s leading sports historians with an erudite, sometimes quirky, socially conscious worldview mostly concentrating on cricket but with an intense interest in his hometown Adelaide in South Australia. A big part of Whimpress's hometown interest was the other dominant sport nurtured in South Australia: Australian rules football.  

As at 2025, Whimpress had written and edited 48 books, mainly on sport. A former curator of the Adelaide Oval Museum, he published and edited the cricket history journal Baggy Green from 1998 to 2010. Whimpress gained a doctorate in history from Adelaide’s Flinders University and, in 2017, was awarded a South Australian lifelong achievement award.

Whimpress’s possible future as a writer was signalled during his Adelaide schooldays by his English teacher at matriculation level, commending his style for an essay on “Success”. But, after dropping out of teachers college and university, Whimpress joined the South Australia government public service. After travelling overseas in 1973-74. “I thought I might become the new [American beat poet Jack] Kerouac but struggled because I had nothing to say”. Robert Pirsig, author of the 1974 philosophical book Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values remained a guiding secondary force behind Whimpress’s writing.

Whimpress had a poem published in a small magazine about 1970 but his first real publishing began in 1975 when he joined journalist Ashley Hornsey and launched Football Times, a weekly newspaper devoted to Australian rules football in South Australia. He wrote a history of South Australian league football, histories of Adelaide clubs and long essays on the social history of the game and its origins and development outside the state of Victoria. Reflecting Whimpress’s wide interests, his research into South Australian National Football League 20^th Century champions such as Magarey Medallists Dan Moriarty and “Wacka: Scott was combined with editing a book on political history of the 1890s.

Whimpress’s cricket books ranged from several biographies, histories of Adelaide clubs to major works on Australian interntaional cricket including the Official MCC Ashes Treasures, The Greatest Ashes Battles and co writingThe History of Australian Cricket. He also explored cricket grounds, events and issues such as throwing and selection. His 1999 Passport to Nowhere, with individual case studies of Johnny Mullagh, Twopenny, Bullocky, Jack Marsh, Albert Henry and Eddie Gilbert delved into understanding Aboriginal sport and some of the most controversial moments in Australian cricket. It followed Whimpress’s philosophy doctorate at Flinders University on the thesis: “Aborigines in Australian Cricket in the Protection Era (1850-1939)” – half cricket history and half Aboriginal policy in Australian colonies and states.

A member of the Australian Society for Sports History, Whimpress had limited commercial success by concentrating on niche publishing as his interest and pleasure. His cricket history journal Baggy Green (1998-2010) had 200 subscribers and just covered costs. Other books included such subjects as city heritage (the words for Adam Lee’s images in Adelaide Then and Now), memoir, Australian art, photography, satire and poetry “now and again”.

In an interview with fellow South Australian-raised sports writer Barry Nicholls, Whimpress described his life as fulfilled with very South Australian pleasures such as shiraz, Coopers Pale Ale and his favourite hotel: the Exeter in Rundle Street, Adelaide city.

• Including information from “A beer with Bernard Whimpress’ by Barry Nicholls