Episode 75 - Cricket Et Al's Official Scorer with Thomas

When Thomas, a 24-year-old cricket obsessive from Australia, bumped into journalists Gideon Haigh and Pete Lalor outside the Adelaide Oval in 2021, he had no idea it would lead to his scorecards appearing at the bottom of their match reports for Cricket Et Al, the Substack newsletter run by two of the game's most respected writers. "I'm Thomas," he said, and they remembered him. Two years later, in Sri Lanka for the 2025 Test tour, Thomas found himself sitting in the Galle Fort, sending Haigh photos of his hand-drawn wagon wheels after each day's play. "It was just so magical," he says. "I can't really describe it."

The accidental scorer

Thomas has been scoring every Australian international match by hand since he was a teenager, producing colorful, detailed scorecards that track each batter's scoring shots and the shape of an innings. The hobby remained private until that Sri Lanka trip, where a chance invitation to dinner with Haigh and Lalor turned into an ongoing collaboration. Now, at the end of every Australian Test match report on Cricket Et Al, readers see "Thomas's official scorecard" — a visual summary of the day's play that Haigh and Lalor describe as "so special." Thomas is modest about it: "I know it's not what the readers come for, but I like to think it gives them a bit of extra colour."