Australian Aboriginal cricket team in England in 1868
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The 1868 Aboriginal cricket tour of England was a cricket tour by a team of Australian Aborigines who toured England between May and October that year, becoming the first Australian cricket team to do so. The first tour by a white Australian team in England did not happen until 1880.
English teams had previously toured the United States and Canada in 1859, and Australia in 1861 and 1863/64.
Team members included:
- Johnny Mullagh - traditional name: Unaarrimin
- Bullocky
- Sundown
- Dick-a-Dick - traditional name: Jungunjinanuke
- Johnny Cuzens
- King Cole - traditional name: Bripumyarrimin (died of tuberculosis early in the tour and was buried in Tower Hamlets in London)
- Red Cap.
- Twopenny - originally from Bathurst. Later played one game for New South Wales against Victoria
- Charley Dumas
- Jimmy Mosquito
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[edit] The indigenous cricket team
From the early 1860s a number of cricket matches between Aborigines and whites were being held, mainly in western Victorian cattle stations around Wimmera, where many Aborigines worked as stockmen. The athletic skills of the Aborigines became apparent and matches developed so that ultimately a representative indigenous cricket team was formed.
Tom Wills managed and coached the team which played a match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Boxing Day 1866 and which attracted 8,000 spectators. A dishonest entrepreneur by the name of Captain Gurnett persuaded them to extend the tour to Sydney. He planned also to go to Brisbane and then to England. After arriving in Sydney however, Gurnett embezzled some of the funds raised for the tour and the team was left stranded.
Eventually they made their way back to Victoria and a second attempt to tour to England was initiated with new financial backers, this time with Charles Lawrence, an ex-Surrey professional cricketer who had coached at the Albert Club in Sydney as coach of the indigenous team.
They arrived in London in May 1868 and were met with a degree of racial fascination - that being the period of the evolutionary controversies following publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1859. Reaction was mixed, with The Times describing the tourists as a travestie upon cricketing at Lord’s, and described the men as the conquered natives of a convict colony. The Daily Telegraph said of Australia that nothing of interest comes from there except gold nuggets and black cricketers.
The first match was played at The Oval with 20,000 spectators in attendance throughout the match, presumably mainly out of curiosity for a strange looking race rather than for cricket. The Times reported: Their hair and beards are long and wiry, their skins vary in shades of blackness, and most of them have broadly expanded nostrils. Having been brought up in the bush to agricultural pursuits under European settlers, they are perfectly civilised and are quite familiar with the English language., and The Daily Telegraph reported: It is highly interesting and curious, to see mixed in a friendly game on the most historically Saxon part of our island, representatives of two races so far removed from each other as the modern Englishman and the Aboriginal Australian. Although several of them are native bushmen, and all are as black as night, these Indian fellows are to all intents and purposes, clothed and in their right minds.
The Aboriginals played 47 matches throughout England over a period of six months between May and October, winning 14, losing 14 and drawing 19 - a good result that would have surprised many at the time. Their skills were said to range from individuals who were exceptional to two or three who hardly contributed at all. Johnny Mullagh scored 1,698 runs and took 245 wickets.
An English fast bowler of the time, George Tarrant bowled to Mullagh during a lunch time interval and later said "I have never bowled to a better batsman".
As well as playing cricket the Aborigines frequently made an exhibition of boomerang and spear throwing at the conclusion of a match as well as various athletic demonstrations. Dick-a-Dick held a narrow parrying shield and would have people throw cricket balls at him which he warded off with the shield. The Aboriginal side was narrowly beaten in a cricket ball throwing competition by a 20-year-old W. G. Grace, who threw 118 yards.
The team arrived back in Sydney in February, 1869. Cuzens and Mullagh were employed the following season as professionals at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Film
A 2002 documentary film — A fine body of Gentleman made by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Film Illawarra and directed by Geoff Burton described the background to each of the players and the matches in detail.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ A Fine Body of Gentlemen. Film Illawarra. Retrieved on 2005-22-05.
- Lords' Dreaming: Cricket on the Run - The 1868 Aboriginal Tour of England by Ashley Mallett - ISBN 0-285-63640-5
- Passport To Nowhere: Aborigines In Australian Cricket 1850-1939 by Bernard Whimpress, Publisher: Walla Walla Press, Sydney, 1999 - ISBN 1-87671-806-4 (cannot find this book)
- Cricket Walkabout: The Australian Aborigines In England by John Mulvaney and Rex Harcourt Publisher: Macmillan Australia, 1988 - ISBN 0-333-43086-7
