Sledging, Segregation & Cricket:

Australia’s Cricketing Past 1830-1899

Joshua Newton-19074923

i The first Australian test cricket team in 1878

Cricket the Australian Way

It is impossible to imagine an Australian summer without the sound of the crack of leather on

willow. Cricket has been associated with the Australian summer for as long as any of us can

remember. But how did this association of Australian summer and cricket begin? Why is cricket
Australia’s favourite summer sport? I intend to answer these questions and more in this piece.

Cricket has been played in Australia since 1803 and had already been well established in the

young colony of Australia with various clubs such as the Currency Cricket Club, the Military

Cricket Club and the Australian Cricket Club ii. Cricket then spread throughout the colonies

during the 1830’s-1850’s with matches being played in Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia,

Queensland and South Australia through this time period. Cricket is seen as the last remaining

link to British imperialism and it is interesting to note that the 12 full members of the ICC are all

former British colonies with the first 3 full members being Australia, England and South Africa.

In the early Australian cricket history, matches were not played at the SCG, Adelaide Oval or the

MCG as those venues would not be commissioned until the 1850‘s and the early matches were

played at Hyde Park iii and the Racecourseiv, both located in Sydney. The first inter-colonial

match was played between Tasmania and Victoria at the Launceston Racecourse in 1851. The

result of this match was in which Tasmania won by 3 wickets. v This match was a timeless match

in which the two teams played until a result was found and there could not be a draw, you could

have a Win, Loss or a Tie but you could not have a draw. In cricket, a Draw is when a result

cannot be found in a match which is different to a Tie which is where both teams finish the

match on the same score.

 vi

South Australia vs England at the Adelaide Oval in1874.

The First Tours

English teams began touring Australia in the 1860’s and the first Australian team to tour England

was in 1868 which was an all indigenous team coached by Tom Wills whom when inter-colonial

matches began in the 1850’s was the leading cricketer as well as being a decent Rugby player

and the founder of Australian Rules Football which was intended as a means of keeping

cricketers fit during the winter months. The first cricket tour by an English team to the Colonies

(Australia) was in 1861-1862. In order to make this happen, the organisers of the tour offered to

pay the touring party £150 per person along with first-class travel and expenses.vii
In the summer of 1863-1864, an English cricket team toured Australia and New Zealand, this

team was the second team to tour Australia and the first team to tour New Zealand. The tourists

played matches in both Victoria and New South Wales, but it is only the match at the MCG that

is recognised as a first-class matchviii.

The first Australian team to tour England was in 1868 and it was an all-indigenous team which

was coached by Tom Wills. The beginnings of and Indigenous Cricket Team can be traced to the

Western Districts of Victoria where sport was introduced to the Aboriginal station hands by the

European Station hands. An Aboriginal XI was created with the help of Tom Wills. International

sporting contact was rare during this time with an English team touring the United States and

Canada in 1859, and an English team to Australia in 1861-1862 and 1863-1864. The team

Indigenous team that toured England was the first Australian team to venture to the Mother

Country, the tour consisted of 47 matches throughout England over a period of 6 months with the

Aboriginal team finishing with 14 wins, 14 losses and 19 draws which is a pretty good resultix.
x
The Aboriginal Cricket Team in England in 1868.

The First Test

In 1877, the Australian Cricket Team and the English Cricket Team played in the first ever test

match at the MCG. This match was a timeless test in which the match would be played until a

result was found, the match duration was 15th - 19th of March 1877. The Australian match won

by the Australians with a margin of 45 runs. The Australian and English teams were the first two

members of the ICC and as such were the first two teams to play test cricket.
 xi
The MCG, 1878

Since 1877, the Australian cricket team has played in 825 test matches with 388 wins, 224

losses, 211 draws and 2 ties.xii The bulk of those test matches have been played against England

either in England or at home in Australia with famous test series being 1882 with the Birth of the

Ashes, 1932-33 with the Bodyline series, 1974-75 with Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson, 1981

with Ian Botham, 1989 when the Australians thrashed the English and 2005 which the 2005

ashes series being labelled as the greatest Ashes series of all time.
Early Competitions

The Sheffield Shield began in 1892-1893 after the Earl of Sheffield who was the tour promoter

for the English team lead by Dr. WG Grace which played 3 tests in Melbourne, Sydney and

Adelaide. The Earl donated a sum of £150 to the New South Wales Cricket Association which is

the predecessor of Cricket Australia to form and create an annual inter-colonial tournamentxiii.

The first season of the Sheffield Shield was in 1892-1893 and was contested by Victoria, New

South Wales and South Australia with Queensland joining the competition in 1926-27, Western

Australia in 1947-48 and Tasmania in 1977-78xiv.

xv The Australian Cricket Team in 1882

Sledging, Segregation and Charlatanism

In the sport of cricket, there is the issue surrounding segregation, however, this segregation is not

one based on racism but rather a segregation of class. With this form of segregation, players of

amateur status were held in a high regard as they were playing cricket for the love of playing

cricket and not as a means of earning a living. It was the same in Australia although, the

cricketers in Australia were payed, they were still classed as amateurs as they had full-time jobs

as well as playing cricket. A case of this was with the tours of English teams to Australia in the

early 1860’s as the English cricketers were payed for playing in the matches as well as having

their travel expenses covered. An example of this is that of WG Grace, an English amateur

whom collected large sums of money, it is estimated that Grace collected £9,703 from the MCC

and Gloucestershire County Cricket Club which in 2018 would be £1,102,900xvi.

Sledging is often associated with Australian cricket and has been linked to Australian cricket

since 1882, with the best sledge coming from the Sporting Times newspaper which stated that

“In Affectionate Remembrance of English Cricket which Died at The Oval on the 29th of August

1882“xvii. This sledge was delivered after a cricket match between England and Australia at the

Oval in 1882 and signalled the birth of the Ashes. Since crickets' beginnings in Australia,

sledging has been prevalent and certain players have excelled in the art of gamesmanship and

using sledging as a weapon to distract a cricketer and either get them out or start a fight. There

are not a lot of accounts of sledging and cheating going on during the early Australian cricket

history simply because a lot of those matches have not been documented and therefore it is

unclear whether sledging and cheating existed within the game of cricket but being that it is a

sport that can last up to 5 days and have no result at the end of the match, the assumption of most

cricket fans and most cricket historians is that there were accounts of sledging and cheating

going on but we do not know them because these records do not exist.
There is an account from The Oval test which details an act of cheating by WG Grace, the

account states that WG Grace ran out the Australian All-Rounder Sammy Jones after he had

completed a single and went down the wicket to inspect the pitch, when Grace broke the stump,

the umpire gave Jones out when the Australian‘s believed that he was not out as they had thought

the ball had been declared dead. This infuriated the Australian fast-bowler Frederick ‘The

Demon’ Spofforth whom stormed into the English dressing room and labelled Grace a “Bloody

Cheat" and remarked that “This Will lose you the match" and it did with Spofforth taking 7/14 in

England’s second inningsxviii.

xix
Frederick ‘The Demon’ Spofforth in 1880
The Answers

So, how did Australia’s association with cricket begin? Australian cricket began in 1803 with

clubs being organised in Sydney and playing matches, cricket then spread throughout the

Colonies during this time. Melbourne and Sydney were the driving forces behind the growth of

cricket in Australia and is Melbourne and Sydney that hosted the first test matches in Australia.

(Australia also hosted the first One Day International in 1971 at the MCG). Once cricket had

grown enough, the English teams toured Australia during the 1860’s and an Indigenous team

toured England in 1868. Cricket is one of the last remaining links to imperialism and to the idea

that the English invented most sports like Cricket, Soccer and Rugby although they are not very

good at winning at sports. Cricket is a sport for all in that you don’t need to possess any great

skill in the game, anyone can play and have fun playing the sport which millions of Australians

and billions of Indians have played and enjoy playing.

Why is cricket Australia’s favourite summer sport? Cricket is one of Australia’s favourite sports

with a record participation of 1,311,184 people participating in organised cricket.xx Those

numbers alone suggest that cricket is one of Australia if the most popular sport in Australia.

Cricket is a fun game and during the Australian summer, most Australian ‘s either watch cricket

on television with the likes of the Big Bash, Test Cricket and One Day Internationals as well as

playing backyard cricket during the summer. In cricket ‘s beginnings, the popularity which it has

today could not be imagined some 216 years ago when the first recorded matches took place in

Sydney in 1803.
i
The first Australian Test Cricket Team to tour England and North America in 1878,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_Australian_Test_squad.jpg
ii
Sydney Gazette 1804, ‘Sydney’, Sydney Gazette, p.3
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/625962
iii
Sydney Gazette 1833, ’Cricket Match’, Sydney Gazette, p.2,12
iv
The Australian 1834, ’The Return Cricket Match’, The Australian
v
Scorecard, 11-12 February 1851 Tasmania vs Victoria.
vi
1874, South Australia vs England at Adelaide Oval,
https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/B+10065
vii
Moyes, G 1959, ’Australian Cricket: A History’, Angus & Robertson, p.32
viii
2018, George Parr’s Xi in Australia and New Zealand 1863/64, Cricket Archive
ix
2014, ’Aborigines-The First Australian Cricket Team’,
http://www.convictcreations.com/football/aborigines.htm
x
The Aboriginal Cricket Team in England in 1868,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_Aboriginal_cricket_team_in_England_186
8.jpg-
img.......0i7i5i30j0i8i7i30.xCaNbHuBTr0&ved=0ahUKEwjIzabcgqzlAhVtILcAHTV_AsoQ4dU
DCAc&uact=5#imgrc=F2nuRMS0gy6_tM:
xi
The MCG, 1877, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mcg_1878.jpg
xii
2019, ’Records/Test Matches/Team Records/Results Summary’, ESPNcricinfo,
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/283877.html
xiii
1893,’The Sheffield Shield’, South Australian Register, p,7
xiv
Frindall, B 1998, ’The Wisden Book of Cricket Records, Headline Book Publishing, p,391
xv
The Australian Cricket Team in 1882
https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/3064871358
xvi
Birley D, ’Graces Indian Summer’, p.159
xvii
Brooks, R.S, ’The Sporting Times’, 2nd of September 1882
xviii
Smyth, R 2015, ’The Golden Age: 1882-1929, Gentlemen and Sledgers, p.5
xix
Frederick ’The Demon’ Spofforth, 1880,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Robert_Spofforth_circa_1880.jpg
xx
Cricket Network, 2016, ’Cricket Becomes Australia’s no.1 Participation Sport’,
https://www.cricket.com.au/news/cricket-australia-census-participation-numbers-women-men-
children-james-sutherland/2016-08-23