A Pictorial History of Test Cricket by Ken Piesse

A

PIC TORIA L

HISTO RY

OF

AUSTRALIAN TEST CRICKET KEN P IESSE

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Echo Publishing A division of Bonnier Publishing Australia 534 Church Street, Richmond Victoria 3121 Australia www.echopublishing.com.au Copyright © Ken Piesse, 2016 Foreword copyright © Chris Rogers, 2016 All rights reserved. Echo Publishing thank you for buying an authorised edition of this book. In doing so, you are supporting writers and enabling Echo Publishing to publish more books and foster new talent. Thank you for complying with copyright laws by not using any part of this book without our prior written permission, including reproducing, storing in a retrieval system, transmitting in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or distributing.

Edited by Kyla Petrilli Cover design by Luke Causby, Blue Cork Page design by Shaun Jury Cover illustrations: Front, left to right: Top: Don Bradman, 2016 Australians at Wellington, Clem Hill. Bottom: Steve Smith, Bodyliner Bill Woodfull, Stan McCabe Back: The Old Pavilion at the Melbourne Cricket Ground 1854–1881 Terry Swingler/Ken Piesse collection/Gerard Conlan collection/ Getty Images/ Dennis Coon collection/Max Williamson, Moss Green Auctions Typeset in New Caledonia LT and Brandon Grotesque Printed in China National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Piesse, Ken, author.

Title: A pictorial history of Australian test cricket / Ken Piesse; Chris Rogers (foreword).

ISBN: 9781760400866 (hardback) Notes: Includes index.

Subjects: Test matches (Cricket)—Australia—Pictorial works.

Test matches (Cricket)—Australia—History.

Cricket—Australia—Pictorial works.

Other Creators/Contributors: Rogers, Chris, writer of foreword.

Dewey Number: 796.3580994 Twitter/Instagram: @echo_publishing Facebook: facebook.com/echopublishingAU Ken Piesse website: cricketbooks.com.au

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Contents

Foreword by Chris Rogers ���������������������������������������������������� vii

Introduction ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 1

The 1870s: A New Formidable Edge ������������������������������������� 7

2

The 1880s: The Game of Empire ����������������������������������������� 15

3

The 1890s: A Grace-Led Revival ����������������������������������������� 27

4

The 1900s: The Beau Ideal �������������������������������������������������� 45

5

The 1910s: Getting Physical ������������������������������������������������� 61

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The 1920s: The Big Ship’s Legacy ��������������������������������������� 71

7

The 1930s: Hero of a Nation ������������������������������������������������ 87

8

The 1940s: Like Royalty ����������������������������������������������������� 115

9

The 1950s: Changing of the Guard ������������������������������������ 131

10 The 1960s: Calypso Magic �������������������������������������������������� 151 11 The 1970s: Dead Man Walking ������������������������������������������ 171 12 The 1980s: Thrashed With a Feather �������������������������������� 191

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13 The 1990s: Wonder Boy ����������������������������������������������������� 207 14 The 2000s: The Greatest of All ������������������������������������������ 221 15 The 2010s: Lions at Home, Lambs Away ������������������������� 233

Acknowledgements ������������������������������������������������������������� 241 Notes ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 243 Index ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 246

HERO OF THE FIRST GREAT MATCH: Charles Bannerman, scorer of Test cricket’s first century in March, 1877.

Melbourne Cricket Club/Cricket’s Colosseum, 125 years of Test cricket at the MCG/Ken Piesse collection

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Foreword

by Chris Rogers

P

laying for Australia is a badge of honour I’ll always cherish. I’m probably as grateful as any for the opportunity as I had a second coming as a cricketer, playing 24 of my 25 Tests after turning 35.

Not only was it special for me, it was fantastic for all my family, especially my parents John (J. R.) and Ros who nurtured my love of the game and wherever we moved, always provided a tennis court for my brother David and I to muck around on.

These days they are still involved in cricket and have their very own ground in the bush, just an hour and a bit north of Melbourne.

Dad was a good player in his own right, representing St George, Don Bradman’s club,

the University of New South Wales (where he captained) and New South Wales. He even faced Wes Hall once without a box – and lived!

We were at his ground at Strath Creek for a corporate match not so long ago and Dad proudly took us all into the cricket museum and told us stories about some of his favourite pictures and memories, from Bodyline’s Harold Larwood, to historic grounds worldwide, to me scoring my first Test 100 at Durham with a death-or-glory sweep shot from the bowling of Graeme Swann, who’d had me tied up for overs. J. R. still has just about every cutting and memento of my career he’s come across.

EXULTANT: Chris Rogers achieves a childhood dream, an Ashes century, at Durham in 2013.

Rogers family archives/Getty Images

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I’ll never forget that Durham century. I had two options for the boundary I needed: hit Swanny down the ground in the air – but without the size of Davey Warner’s bat or forearms it was highly likely I’d be caught; or sweep him to backward square, which was relatively free of fielders. Luckily, I did and got the four I’ll never forget. It was the shot of my career. Everyone was relieved, especially Mum and Dad who’d been riding every run with me in the stand and joined the team and I in the change rooms after the day’s play.

The phone calls and texts and emails I received and all the congratulatory messages on Twitter and Facebook were just amazing. Friends from my very first club at North Devon in the UK through to schoolmates from Perth and teammates from the mighty Vics were all in touch. It was staggering really. And all for a cheeky little red-headed kid who had chosen cricket over tennis at 13 because he liked the team aspects more and the idea of meeting a host of new friends.

It’s one of the reasons why I love cricket so much and why I played yet another year in England with Somerset in 2016. You immediately work with a whole brace of new mates and have 10 new friends, just as passionate about cricket as you.

I’ve lost count of the times I have been to the UK for their summer. It must be up to 19 or even 20. It was in England in 2011 when I was told that the Vics weren’t going to renew my contract. At the time I was 33 going on 34. They felt I had little hope of playing Test cricket again. But somehow in the following weeks, an eleventh-hour place opened when a teenage Ashton Agar switched states and away I went again, loving every minute of it. And this time it led to the higher levels I’d always craved.

Everyone has a story to tell and I’m glad I was able to add to mine and repay some of the faith shown in me along the way, especially those like Greg Shipperd, Victoria’s long-time coach, who viii

supported me unconditionally upon my move to Melbourne. When you have backing like that and the opportunities open, anything is possible.

Along the way there are always setbacks – it’s how you react to them that can define your career.

After the Lord’s Test in 2013, one of my heroes Allan Border suggested that Australia’s No. 9, 10 and 11 batsmen were better than the first three.

Going by the stats from the first two Tests that summer, he was spot on. But it really cut me up. I rang him, we chatted and he was very encouraging.

And two Tests later at the Riverside Ground, I achieved the Test 100 I’d always wanted. I know it wasn’t pretty like a Mark Waugh century, but it meant the world to me.

I’ve had the privilege now of sharing some of my stories on the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) during the Tests and one-dayers and also to many cricket-loving groups like the Australian Cricket Society, of which Ken Piesse is president.

They send 12 and 13-year-old boys and girls on scholarships to the Elite Cricket Academy in Melbourne. I like that. It’s fast-tracking we all would have loved to have had.

Like my Dad, Ken has a rare passion for cricket.

You just have to take a tour of Ken’s library to know how much he loves it.

He showed me some of the early pages of this pictorial masterpiece and it’s truly enthralling.

Stunning, really. I love the old cycle tracks around some of the historical grounds like Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. And the pencil-thin bats that even Victor Trumper used. The crowds were huge at some of those old-time Tests, just as they are now.

Cricket has always been our national game and to have writers like Ken penning histories like this is a wonderful reminder of the game’s enduring popularity. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

– CHRIS ROGERS, Melbourne

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Introduction

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t was a brilliantly clear Thursday in mid-March, Melbourne’s skies a vivid blue. The formalities were minimal, but the applause tumultuous as the two Australian opening batsmen, Charles Bannerman and Nat Thomson from Sydney, stepped from the pavilion and onto the arena, backslapped all the way. They were about to oppose the visiting Englishmen, led by James Lillywhite jnr and the much-fabled round-armer Alfred Shaw. The colourful ties and belt bands worn by the English professionals were considered a great success. This was a truly grand international event, a representative cricket match on equal terms: 11 colonial Australians versus 11 from the mother country.

Many of the 1500-strong crowd had arrived early, thinking it was a late morning start. It ensured an extended lunch hour particularly for those hosting the beer tents. Some of the younger ones ‘began to shout good temperedly for some play’.1 Others preferred to parade on the lawn. It was a great display of youth and local beauty. Even then, cricket had a fashionable and social side.

The appearance of Allan’s Premier Band, which performed an assortment of waltzes, quadrilles and gallops together with an overture and a grand march, added to the atmosphere and expectation.

Despite the four-shilling surcharge, the Melbourne’s Cricket Club’s new pride-and-joy 2000-seat Public Grandstand was packed and there was a round of excited tittering as Bannerman calmly guided the second ball from Shaw square of the wicket for Test cricket’s first run.

Kent-born, Bannerman had lived in England

until he was 20. He was one of seven from the UK in Australia’s XI. Only four were true born-andbred ‘cornstalks’.

The first Great Match was to last into midafternoon on the fourth day. The attendance on the Saturday reached 10,000, an enormous crowd given that the entire colony of Melbourne at the time numbered just over 200,000.

One hundred and forty years on, cricket with all its arresting rhythms and changing hues retains a captivating hold on the Australian psyche and consciousness. The names change, but the crowds remain just as enamoured and passionate. Old mates meet and celebrate the greatest of all games.

Fans unable to attend avidly watch the television or listen to the description on their radios, smartphones and computers, interest peaking whenever England visits.

On Test match days, many members arrive before first light, queuing for hours to secure the prized behind-the-wicket positions. In Sydney at the 7 a.m. opening of the gates, ‘the Paddington Gift’ is contested despite the urging of stewards for members to walk and not run. In Adelaide, those arriving early enough set up their portable seats under the 100-year-old Moreton Bay fig trees. They are grateful for the shade and marvel at the tranquillity and beauty. Adelaide remains the prettiest, most-English mainland ground of all and in Adelaide more than any other venue, women dress to impress in their flowing summer dresses and matching hats.

For the cricketers, those fortunate enough to have been awarded an Australian baggy green cap 1

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have an elevated status – for life. Less than 450 Australians have played Test cricket. The captaincy is regaled as the most important job in the country, ahead even of the prime ministership.

The most cricket-loving of all PMs, Robert Menzies was known to interrupt parliamentary question time to check the score. He even started his own PM XI’s match so he could more frequently mix with the cricketers. As a young defending barrister sitting in front of the elderly Bill Moule – who’d played in the very first Ashes Test in England in 1880 – Menzies had won several

TOP OFFICE: Few loved cricket, or the company of cricketers, like Australia’s longtime Prime Minister Bob Menzies who sent this dinner invitation to one of his favourites, Gordon Tamblyn, in the autumn of 1939 after rain in Adelaide had robbed Victoria of certain victory and the 1938–39 Sheffield Shield.

Tamblyn family archives

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cases by reminding the courtroom of his client’s love of cricket. Judge Moule would invariably rise from his slumber and ask the accused: ‘So . . . you play cricket?’

Menzies believed it was in the best interests of his nation for him to travel regularly to England – at least every four years around the time of the Lord’s Test. Wife Pattie wasn’t as smitten. Once in Melbourne, she sat stoically as Hobbs and Sutcliffe batted through the entire day. When she next went to the cricket, in London, she complained to her husband, ‘But Bob . . . they’re still batting . . .’2 During the Great Depression in the early 1930s, when one in four adult Australian men was unemployed, cricket was a saviour and the deeds of prodigies like Archie Jackson and Don Bradman avidly followed. Tragically, Jackson died young but Bradman became the most celebrated Australian of all. Cricket’s new run-scoring colossus, he offered fresh hope to a nation on its economic knees.

Lunchtime crowds in Sydney would treble when it was known Bradman was ‘in’.

Bill Brown opened the New South Wales innings with Jack Fingleton one day and had made a good start, only to suddenly forfeit his wicket. ‘I walked back to this incredible reception. I’d made only 40 or 50 and I thought how generous is that, before I realised who was coming down the aisle to replace me. It was Don. They were clapping for him, not me.’

Cricket disciples of all ages remember where they were – and who they were with – at important world events, like the time Warnie flippered champion West Indian Richie Richardson in Melbourne in 1992–93. Graham Wilson, guitarist with one of the most enduring Australian acts of all: the Four Kinsmen, and I were watching on from the plush balcony seats about five rows back in the old Melbourne Cricket Club Cigar Stand.

Caught on his crease, Richardson realised too late

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that it was Warne’s quicker one, artfully squeezed from the front of the fingers. As it zeroed past a shocked Richardson and onto his off-stump, a new legend was born. Warne’s dressing-room smile that afternoon was from a boy who belonged.

Amazingly, just days earlier while walking through Yarra Park from the Hilton on the first morning of his career-defining match, Warne confided to wicketkeeper Ian Healy that he felt like a dud and was about to disappoint dozens of his mates who were attending the match. More than 700 Test wickets later, Warne is unchallenged as the Bradman of bowlers.

The man who coached him, maverick legspinner Terry Jenner had in a previous life been jailed for embezzlement. He met a 20-year-old Warne while on parole. They shook hands, Warne genuine in his smile and his handshake. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got, son,’ said Jenner. They walked to the nets at the Adelaide No. 2, Warne bowling two humming, veering, spitting leg-breaks before Jenner stopped him with a smile and said, ‘That’s enough, son . . . think we’ve got something here.’

Throughout Warne’s roller-coasting years, Jenner was beside him, mentoring and encouraging.

Thanks to Warne, he became internationally acclaimed and rebuilt his life.

So many diverse personalities have represented Australia in the first 140 years, from posties and milkmen to beekeepers and undertakers. Warne’s first job was as a pizza delivery boy. For larks before training at St Kilda’s Junction Oval, he’d burn around the bitumen terraces as fast as he could in a hotted-up Cortina with the stereo turned up mega loud.

Every one of the 450 Test representatives has a story to tell, like firebrand express Rodney Hogg, who in a hazy moment swapped one of his baggy greens for a policeman’s helmet and handcuffs, and slow bowler Bryce McGain, who’d always dreamt

of making a Test century but never envisaged his would come in 11 overs, in Cape Town. It was his one and only appearance.

Before helping introduce 10-pin bowling to Australia after the war, Bradman ‘Invincible’ Arthur Morris was a car salesman. He made a century in a hurry for New South Wales one morning and with the match finishing by lunchtime, went back to work in the afternoon. Everyone had jobs back then.

Morris was on business in London one day when the conversation turned to Don Bradman and his famous blob in his final Test of the 1948 tour.

‘Yes,’ said Arthur, ‘I remember that well.’

‘Oh,’ said his companion who knew little about cricket. ‘What were you doing there? Were you on holidays?’

‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘I was actually at the other end.’

‘Oh,’ said the man, even more surprised. ‘Did you do any good?’

‘I did actually.’

‘Did you make a few?’

MENTOR: Terry Jenner was coach, confidant and friend for Shane Warne throughout his headlining career.

INTRODUCTION

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‘Yes, I did . . . 196 . . . run out – but no-one ever remembers it because Don made a duck.’

Even in retirement, Bradman’s contributions to cricket were remarkable. As an administrator, he attended two and three cricket meetings a week for nigh on 30 years. Once a week he’d drive to the Adelaide Oval to autograph books and cards sent by admirers worldwide. He helped broker an end to World Series Cricket after a secret meeting with Kerry Packer and his influence was so considerable, even approaching his 70th birthday,

that when he wrote to Test selector Sam Loxton late in the 1976–77 summer, excited at the feats of attractive local left-hander David Hookes, Loxton and Co. immediately selected the South Australian youngster for the Centenary Test. Using an old yellowing bat with vellum holding it together, Hookes, 22, started with five 4s in a row against Tony Greig to announce his arrival as the new darling of Australian cricket.

When Trevor Chappell rolled an underarm to finish a one-day international in Melbourne in

OVERSHADOWED: Arthur Morris (right) topscored with 138 in the opening fixture of 1948, but it was Don Bradman’s century, his fourth in a row against Worcestershire, which cornered the headlines . . . again.

SUPERSTITIOUS: David Hookes preferred to keep his favourite old bat, which was held together by vellum, for his Test debut in 1977.

Cricketer magazine/Ken Piesse collection

Gordon Vidler/Ken Piesse collection

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1981, a disbelieving Bradman rang the delegate’s room at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) seeking an explanation. He couldn’t imagine the game being so sullied. Loxton ventured down the stairs into the Australian rooms and said: ‘Hell of a way to win a cricket match fellas.’

The stories and memories from those first 140 international years are as riveting for me now as they were as a teenager when I’d borrow all 18 of the cricket books held by the Parkdale Library, including B. J. Wakley’s masterly Bradman the Great and Roy Webber’s Phoenix History of Cricket and set them up in a bookcase behind my bed imagining they were mine.

Back then one of our neighbours at Beaumaris was Colin McDonald, the former Australian Test opener who was temporarily ranked the world’s No. 1 batsman after back-to-back Ashes centuries to finish his golden summer of 1958–59.

Colin was into his 80s when I assisted in the editing of his autobiography. In 2015, an updated and enhanced version sold out within weeks. All his old teammates rallied, six autographing the special limited edition. Ian Meckiff had been struggling with arthritis in his wrist and fingers but insisted on signing, as painful as it was. A seriously ill Lindsay Kline was on morphine but also agreed. McDonald’s book included the revelations of Keith Miller’s running war with his captain Ian Johnson, culminating in a searing argument after play in Barbados one night on the 1955 tour. ‘We had to separate them,’ said McDonald. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to have taken on “Nugget” but “Johnno”

had his shirt off and was ready to go [fight].’3 The blue had remained in-club for almost 50 years.

Years later, Miller still harboured a grudge about Johnson being preferred to him as Australia’s captain. Nugget reckoned Don Bradman, Australia’s selection chairman, was jealous of his popularity. He loved the Don as a player but that was where he drew the line. He regarded Johnson ‘as a Bradman man’ and would invariably change at the opposite end of the dressing room. Once Brian Hansen and I launched Wildmen of Cricket in which Miller had a starring role. Told that we could invite a few of his contemporaries like Johnson, Miller said: ‘Don’t bother.’

In 2008, when Warne released Shane Warne’s Century, My Top 100 Test Cricketers, he made it crystal clear that the Australian rooms in his time, too, were never totally united. Mark Waugh was ranked 9th, yet Adam Gilchrist was only 16th and Steve Waugh 26th. The passing years had not dimmed Warne’s resentment at Waugh using his casting vote to drop him at St John’s in 1999.

Had Miller been asked to conduct a similar exercise, Johnson may have been lucky to make his top 50! But he wasn’t into ratings, or stats, of any sort. I told him once of a friend’s interest in publishing a game-by-game account of the Miller career from the hallowed pages of Wisden. As soon as I mentioned that a similar book about Bradman had just been issued, he turned off and said: ‘Nah, not interested.’

– KEN PIESSE, Mount Eliza

INTRODUCTION

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The 1870s

1 The 1870s

A New Formidable Edge ‘The best bat I ever saw in Australia was undoubtedly Charles Bannerman. His superior has yet to appear in that country.’

– WILLIAM CAFFYN

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he ‘father’ of Test cricket was William Josiah Sumner Hammersley, a Surrey man orphaned at 15, who abandoned his wife and four young children to work and play cricket in Melbourne.

A Cambridge Blue, he was a stylish bowler with a useful ‘twisting’ style.1 He represented Victoria in early intercolonials and contributed cricket stories as ‘Longstop’ in the Australasian. For a short time he was secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Club.

He also edited three of the rarest early Australian cricket annuals.

Approaching the 1861–62 season, Hammersley wrote of the forthcoming ‘test matches’ involving H. H. Stephenson’s Englishmen, the first international sporting team to tour Down Under.

The term lapsed for some years before, in 1894, on the eve of the game’s halcyon Golden Age, noted Adelaide cricket writer Clarence Moody formulated a list of what he considered to be ‘Testclass’ matches. In his booklet Australian Cricket and Cricketers, he backdated the representative

THE 1878 AUSTRALIANS: Just six from Australia’s original first Test team toured England and beyond in 1878, a tour which was to extend 14 months and also take in matches in New Zealand and the USA. Standing, left to right: Jack Blackham, Tom Horan, George Bailey, Jack Conway (manager, in suit), Alick Bannerman, Charles Bannerman, Billy Murdoch.

Sitting: Dave Gregory. Front: Fred Spofforth, Frank Allan, Billy Midwinter, Tom Garrett and Harry Boyle. Middle bottom: England’s outstanding all-rounder George Ulyett.

Right bottom: Frank Allan, who preferred to keep an appointment with friends in the bush than play in the first Big Match.

Gerard Conlan collection/Cricket Lore

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contests to 1876–77 and international cricket’s first 11-a-side match, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.2 Hammersley died before Test cricket matches became popular parlance but he remains the originator of one of the most recognised sporting expressions. He, like thousands of other Brits,

Left: VISIONARY: W. J. S. Hammersley, the father of Test cricket.

Melbourne Cricket Club

Right: AGGRIEVED: Following a riot at an 1879 match in Sydney, Lord Harris ran a vendetta against the 1880 Australians before the sweet-talking C. W. Alcock convinced him for the greater good of the game to lead England in a one-off Test against the tourists at The Oval.

Painting by Albert Chevallier Tayler

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directly influenced cricket’s widening horizons.

With news of the massive gold strikes, many from the old country arrived in the colonies intent on making their fortunes. Employment was plentiful and the pay substantial. Cricket was their preferred leisure, many a pick-up game being played on the goldfields around Ballarat and Bendigo.

The visit of the third English team in 1873–74 led by the game’s ultimate champion 25-year-old William Gilbert Grace continued the momentum.

‘W. G.’ was treated like royalty – and paid accordingly. Everyone wanted to see him; the receptions were enormous. His image was on every red, white and blue poster: ‘COME AND SEE GRACE & THE ALL ENGLAND XI’.3 Even in the tiniest towns his teams visited, brass

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‘Happy Jack’ Ulyett, the visitors fielded some of the finest players of the day.

The colonial XI, selected and co-ordinated by businessman and fast bowler John Conway, included five from Sydney and six from Melbourne. The aristocratic Charles Bannerman, who was to register Test cricket’s first century in the inaugural Great Match was one of the five from Sydney alongside fellow opener Nat Thomson, teenager Tom Garrett – at 18, the youngest player on either side – and the Gregory brothers, Ned and Dave. Dave Gregory, aged 32, was captain. Conway had initially invited Ted Evans and Fred Spofforth but Evans, an inspector for the Department of Lands, railed against travelling 600 miles (965 kilometres) for a cricket match. So miffed was Spofforth, Australia’s first great bowler, at the choice of Jack Blackham for Victoria’s wicketkeeper ahead of NSW’s Billy Murdoch that he also refused to play. Victoria’s famed swerve bowler Frank Allan had arranged to meet friends at the Warrnambool Agricultural Show and sent a telegram 48 hours before the match start saying he couldn’t stand them up.

The game was billed as ‘A Combined Eleven of New South Wales and Victoria v. J. Lillywhite’s England XI’. While the match was not truly representative, it was to become the first official Test between Australia and England. And it was a financial bonanza with 20,000 attending, including 10,000 on the Saturday.

Each of the Australian XI had been promised 20 pounds from the gate takings, the equivalent of two months’ wages for most working men. Young Garrett from Newington College was particularly excited by his eleventh-hour call-up. Spofforth’s personal protest and Allan’s recalcitrance had against-all-odds opened a place. Garrett was one of only four in the colonial combine – alongside the Gregory brothers and Blackham – not to have been born in the UK. A NEW FORMIDABLE EDGE

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The 1870s

bands would assemble to play ‘Here Comes the Champion’. W. G. was married in October 1873, and the tour to Australia was the couple’s honeymoon.

The enthusiasm to see the visiting cricketers was truly remarkable, and a young, alert and entrepreneurial James Lillywhite jnr was one of the tourists to take particular notice. Lillywhite recognised the potential and improvement in the colonial game, especially in the depth of quality bowlers. The public was genuinely hungry to attend matches, especially involving players from the ‘mother’ country. When Lillywhite did return in 1876–77 for what was to be recognised as the first official Test match tour, he came as sole promoter, team manager and player, paying all his professionals other than his lieutenant, champion bowler Alfred Shaw, a set wage and keeping the remainder of the gate profits for himself.

There had been great jubilation in 1873–74 when 18s from NSW and Victoria had defeated Grace’s team. In 1876–77, NSW and Victoria won again with 15-a-side. Colonial cricket was building a new, formidable edge.

Lillywhite’s 1876–77 tourists had also agreed to a set of matches in New Zealand as part of their extended tour. Before crossing the Tasman in January, with promises of more cricket upon their return, the English had for the first time contested an even-handed match against NSW at Sydney’s Albert Ground. Eight thousand attended and the game was competitive.

They returned in mid-March, and less than 24 hours later were heading into the first Great Match in Melbourne. It had been a rough crossing and almost everyone was seasick. In addition, one of their party, wicketkeeper Ted Pooley had been detained in Christchurch by police after a betting scandal. However, in their captain, master bowler Shaw and the tough-as-teak Yorkshireman George

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Above: PROMINENT: From the time he clean-bowled Dr W. G. Grace representing XVIII of Victoria against England in 1873–74, Harry Boyle was an outstanding colonial cricketer. He took 600 wickets on his five trips to the UK. Later he was an Australian touring team manager.

He also ran a prominent Melbourne sporting goods store.

Above left: PRINCE OF STUMPERS: Jack Blackham.

Melbourne Cricket Club

Left: BROTHERS: The Gregory brothers Charles (left), Dave and Ned. All represented New South Wales. Dave and Ned also played in the first Test. Dave led the first white team tour to England in 1878. Ned was long-time curator at the Sydney Cricket Ground and the first to oversee the use of Bulli soil in the ground’s famed centre square.

Far right: INFLUENTIAL: As player, coach and mentor, William Caffyn had few superiors in the 1860s and 1870s.

The first big-name Englishman to accept coaching terms Down Under, he was responsible for the fast-tracking of Charles Bannerman who made 165 in the inaugural Combined Match.

Ken Piesse collection

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The 1870s

Bannerman was a free-flowing, easy-on-theeye batsman, who had been coached for years at Warwick Cricket Club by the noted English professional William Caffyn, ‘the Surrey Pet’.

Unlike many of his contemporaries who favoured crude leg-side hits, Bannerman caressed and timed the ball, playing in a lovely straight arc. His technique was impeccable. Compared with today’s huge bats, his bat was as thin as balsa wood, yet the ball still rocketed through the infield. Standing 5 feet 7½ inches (171 centimetres), slightly over Don Bradman’s height, he liked to meet the bowling, Garrett saying ‘he used his feet as well as any batsman who ever played’.4 He was the first great colonial batsman.

A lead member of the first three English touring teams, to America in 1859 and Australia in 1861–62 and 1863–64, Caffyn had been one of the most formidable all-rounders pre-Test cricket.

He was also a noted coach and ever since starting H. H. Stephenson’s tour in 1862 with a sublime 79 in Melbourne, he’d been of interest to the colonials wanting to engage a leading international to fast-track the advancement of their own most promising. An initial salary of 300 pounds a year from the Melbourne Cricket Club was seen as money well spent and Caffyn, a hairdresser by trade, stayed on after his second tour, working and coaching initially in Melbourne before shifting to Sydney.

Caffyn had instantly identified Bannerman as a player of polish and verve. ‘The best bat I ever saw in Australia was undoubtedly Charles Bannerman,’ Caffyn was to reminisce. ‘His superior has yet to appear in that country.’5 Ideal conditions greeted the players on the opening day. Bannerman should easily have been caught at 10 only for the simplest of catches to be grassed by lob bowler Thomas Armitage. He was one of several said to have been particularly

affected by the rough passage across the Tasman.

By the 6 p.m. close, in front of a crowd which had swelled to 3000, Bannerman was 126 not out and men in top hats and ladies in flowing dresses greeted his return to the pavilion with extended and enthusiastic applause. He played with princely command and made 165 before being struck by a kicking delivery from Ulyett. His index finger was split and he was forced to retire hurt.

It was almost 125 years before another Test debutant was to make so formidable a score. No Australian Test batsman since has so dominated the scoring in any single innings. When he reached three figures, Australia was 4-135. Bannerman’s 165 represented two-thirds of the score of 245. The next top scorer was Garrett with 18 not out. The colonials won the game by 45 runs.

A NEW FORMIDABLE EDGE

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‘When the news reached England,’ said Lord Harris, ‘the defeat was attributed to the uncertainty for which the game is remarkable. People did not recognise for a moment that we had been beaten fairly and squarely.’6 Two weeks later in Melbourne, with an even stronger XI, including Spofforth and Murdoch, the Australians were comfortably defeated, Ulyett becoming the first to make a 50 in each innings of a Test. A five-time tourist to Australia, he was Test cricket’s first great all-rounder, and also England’s fastest bowler. In the first Melbourne Test, he had Tom Horan caught at the wicket by John Selby standing 20 yards (18 metres) back.

A GRAND PLACE: Even in the nineteenth century, Sydney’s Association Cricket Ground was noted for its accommodation for members, ladies and the general public. It was here that England’s visiting captain Lord Harris was accosted, triggering temporary cracks in Empire relations. Now the SCG is a magnificent showpiece, one of the finest grounds of all.

Australian Cricket Album/R. A. Dransfield/Ken Piesse collection

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At least some English pride had been restored.

The sizeable profits pocketed by Lillywhite ensured his regular presence Down Under for much of the next decade.

Five teams toured in this period, the most turbulent, with immediate ramifications for the game Down Under being the visit by one of English cricket’s long-time powerbrokers, Lord Harris (George Robert Canning) in 1878–79. The team was strong in batting but weak in bowling, losing its only Test easily. In Sydney, the match against a NSW XI was marred by a crowd riot in which Harris was assaulted. Local hero Murdoch had been given out run out by the ‘English’ umpire, George Coulthard, a Victorian. After scoring a capital 82, unconquered, in the first innings, Murdoch was the key player in NSW saving the game in the second. There was much bookmaking activity and angry crowd members stormed the oval in protest at the decision. NSW lost the match by an innings. Visibly shaken, Harris took years to get over it, leading a boycott against future Australian touring teams.

A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN TEST CRICKET

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