AFTER Freddie Flintoff’s Ashes extravaganza at Lord’s, everyone’s talking about cricket.

And now alongside science, technology, engineering and design, students in Huddersfield can study our national summer sport.

The first Cricket Research Centre in the UK has been launched – in Huddersfield.

The initiative is the brainchild of Dr Peter Davies and colleagues at the University of Huddersfield and the hope is that it will encourage further academic work in the area of cricket history.

“It's a very significant development”, said Dr Davies, who also runs the £50,000 Kirklees and Calderdale Cricket Heritage Project.

“The only other similar body we know of in the world is in Barbados. It's called the University of the West Indies Centre for Cricket Research”.

And Dr Davies is excited by future possibilities, as much of the country is gripped by cricket fever because of the Ashes series.

“Over the past five years, there has been significant research in the area of cricket history at the University of Huddersfield.

“The establishment of the Cricket Research Centre reflects this and also opens up new avenues for collaborative projects and cross-disciplinary activity in and around cricket history”.

Dr Davies will be assisted by Dr Rob Light – an expert on amateurism and professionalism and the history of cricket in the nineteenth-century West Riding – and two Phd students.

Dennis O’Keefe is working on the relationship between cricket and religion in Calderdale, while Duncan Stone is investigating the significance of regional identity in cricket, with particular reference to Surrey and Yorkshire.

All four historians have published in the area of cricket history.

Dr Davies said: “The main aims of the Centre are to facilitate cricket-related research and enable the sharing of ideas and networking.

“We also want to bid for external research funding and encourage postgraduate students to come to Huddersfield to engage in cricket research”.

The Huddersfield group hold monthly research seminars and have a full programme of guest lectures planned.

In due course they will be welcoming Australian cricket writer David Frith, professor of church history Hugh McLeod, sociology lecturers Dr Philippa Velija and Dr Dan Bardsey, and cricket historians Professor Jeff Hill and Dr Jack Williams.

“We also host an annual cricket conference and will have a website which will enable cricket researchers from all over the world to share their ideas”, said Dr Davies.

“Currently, we are working on a book for Manchester University Press, Cricket and Community in England since c.1860: A Social and Cultural History, which should be published in September 2010”.

And the new Huddersfield Cricket Research Centre is particularly keen to encourage postgraduate study.

The Centre’s website is at http://www.hud.ac.uk/mhm/history/research/cricket.