How Rob Moody, aka Robelinda2, built his massive archive of match footage

“I don’t even know,” Moody said when wisden.com managing editor Ben Gardner quizzed him about it. “People ask me for stuff and I’m thinking, ‘I can’t do that, are you nuts? Why would I have this random delivery from a county match? I’m in Australia, how would I even have that footage?’

“And so I had to search the archive, and I’m like, ‘Think I might have that.’ And then I looked at it and ‘Don’t know how I got it, when I got it, but I got it.”

Moody explained how he has taped “everything for the last 30-something years” because the official highlights omit a lot of interesting bits that can only be retrieved if the matches are recorded in full.

“I don’t even know half the stuff I’ve got,” he added. “Tape everything whatever comes on for the last 30-something years. You don’t watch every ball of everything, you don’t remember every ball of every match.

“It’s actually really fun when people out there on social media have got their own little memories from all these matches. That’s what is really cool that people do remember different things when they watch the same match.

“So, yes, it’s really fun to go and find footage and even exciting for me if I got it and I impress myself. Great to check it up for everyone to see. Highlights on the internet are generally the same old stuff you know.

“Heaps of cool little things that people recall from 20 years ago that didn’t make it into the highlights of that Test or a one-dayer. It’s something you only will see if you watch the full game. And if you taped it, that’s the only way you would be able to see it 20 years later.

“That’s what is really cool. Just makes me happy that I took the time and effort to record the full matches when I could, rather than just the 20-minute highlights. [They] miss out so many niche little cool things, which is predominantly what I’ve uploaded over the years.”