Grave inscriptions approved for Test players

Victor Trumper's gravestone in Sydney's Waverley Cemetery could soon carry a baggy green crest, after Cricket Australia approved the lasting tribute to former Test players as part of the board's 100th anniversary tomorrow. The mark was announced as one of a series of measures to celebrate the first meeting of the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket on May 6, 1905.

Bob Merriman, Cricket Australia's chairman, said the project to honour past players would also include commemorative certificates for family members of past male and female players, and a history of the board. The move follows the presentation of mini baggy greens and individual numbers to all living players at a function in 2003.

Trumper, who died of Bright's Disease in 1915 aged 37, is one of 192 Australian Test players who had passed away before the reunion. He was the country's most brilliant batsman of the Golden Age, and scored 3163 runs in 48 Tests before being buried in the same cemetery as the poets Henry Lawson and Dorothea Mackellar.

The Australian Board of Control for International Cricket Matches, which began after the Australasian Cricket Council folded close to bankruptcy in 1900, became the Australian Cricket Board in 1973 and Cricket Australia in 2003. Merriman said cricket history was correctly about playing the game, but believed it was important to recognise the board's administrative staff too. The 100-year party will be held at Ormond Hall tomorrow, a venue near the location of the inaugural meeting at Melbourne's Wesley College.