As a self-confessed cricket tragic, I was figuratively stumped when Ric Finlay turned on his camera for our Zoom interview.

I couldn’t take my eyes away from what lined the shelves behind him.

"Yes it’s a great backdrop, isn’t it?" a laughing Finlay said.

That backdrop being a full set of Wisden cricket almanacs.

"I should say also that we have a shack up the east coast of Tasmania where I’ve got some duplicates as well, so I thought I may as well collect a full set of them."

He would go on to add that he has a complete set of NZ Cricket Almanacs in the collection too.

"I'm allowed to have this little room in my house by my long-suffering wife, she's been great."

Minutes into our conversation, one thing became very clear; the fountain of cricket knowledge in the room wasn’t the leather-bound sporting bibles.

It was the man in front of them.

Since the early 1960s, Finlay has been fascinated both by the art of cricket and its true art form - that of numbers.

"I have a tendency to try and quantify things I suppose and measure things. And I've been doing that since I was a kid," the proud Tasmanian said.

"I remember my first [cricket Test] in 1962-63 when Ted Dexter's team toured. I avidly wrote down the scores in the ABC cricket book, we only had pencil and paper stats until the advent of the computer.

"It probably doesn't surprise you to know I went on to become a math teacher.”

But gone are the days of the blackboard, with Finlay now spending most of his time in front of a computer screen, monitoring his cricket database Tastats.

One which he set up in partnership with colleague and fellow cricket lover David Fitzgerald.

"I spent 1993 typing in about 1500 Test matches by hand into the database. We've now got something approaching 40,000 matches on board including the nearly 4000 matches of New Zealand cricket."

Not only did this database service his own cricketing curiosity, but it also found a crucial role in the game itself with teams, coaches, players now signing up for all the analytics, insight and data Tastats has to offer.

"I get a fairly good re-subscription rate which is a good sign."

But it was in the commentary box where the database, and Finlay, found a new home.

“About 2010 I think it started, the scorer up in Brisbane became ill and couldn't do it. I flew up under my own steam and did the job. I did that for two or three years."

And the rest, as they say, is history. He now travels with the ABC’s commentary team to cover the Australian summer of cricket.

"You can refute arguments commentators are making," he said with a glint in his eye.

"One thing we don’t want is commentators guessing. If I’m evident then that means the statistical, numerical side is evident and I think that’s critical for broadcast."

And this is how I came across Finlay and his work.

For all you fellow cricket tragics out there, if you’re not already following Finlay on Twitter, can I suggest you amend that immediately.

After all, it was on social media that he posted this short, matter-of-fact message.

At first I skimmed the tweet, doom-scrolled my way past before having a second read.

It then hit me how mammoth a task that must have been.

I also couldn’t help but smirk at the irony that an Australian had managed to complete one of the biggest services to New Zealand’s cricketing history.

“Most of that time has been taken perusing your fantastic newspaper archives. Not talking to an Australian audience here, I can say it [Papers Past] is better than the Australian one.

"For me as a non-New Zealander, I feel quite proud to have done that. If it helps support New Zealand cricket in some little way then I’m really pleased about that."

A second irony to this story, Finlay hasn't visited any of the Kiwi grounds that he's documented so much.

"I'd just love to go hire a car and visit the length and breadth of New Zealand to visit them and see them."

The closest he's come was way back in 2003, when he visited Paraparaumu on the Kapiti Coast for a barbershop-singing workshop.

After years of sifting through New Zealand's newspaper archives, I asked if any player had surprisingly stood out for him.

“One batsman of New Zealand's past that really caught my imagination was a fella called Bert Sutcliffe," he replied.

"He was a giant for Otago in the 40s and 50s, and even played Test cricket in the 1960s.

"He has the two highest scores in New Zealand - 385 against Canterbury and 355 against Auckland, both for Otago.

"He was clearly a talented batsman."

But the purpose of the database isn’t all about the days of cricketing yonder. He’s also found ways to evolve the analytics in step with the game, particularly as cricket delves even deeper into its white ball evolution.

"The white ball game is a risk-versus-reward game, isn’t it?

“I developed quite a simple metric, which is basically the geometric mean of the average and the strike rate. So if you multiply them together, take the square root, you come up with a figure which encompasses both."

I couldn’t resist the chance to see the math teacher and statistician extraordinaire in action, so I asked him to quickly find who topped that metric in New Zealand.

"It's probably who you would expect," he said as his fingers expertly applied search filters and parameters in the background.

It took him less than 20 seconds.

"Surprise surprise, the person at the top of the order is none other than Ross Taylor, just ahead of Devon Conway."

If Taylor ever read this, it’s perhaps yet another reason to lift a glass of his favourite red tipple for a remarkable career.

A career that’s possible to quantify in numbers, thanks to unwavering servants of the game, like Ric Finlay.