The MCC batted first and were all out for 164. Mullagh and Cuzens did the bulk of the bowling taking five and four wickets respectively. When the Australians batted, they were soon in trouble at 6 for 2 and then 43 for 4, but a brilliant 75 from Mullagh, supported by 31 from Lawrence, helped them to a first innings lead of 21. Cuzens bowled well when the MCC batted again, taking 6 for 65. Among his victims were an Earl, a Knight of the Realm and an Army Captain; quite an impressive hat trick! The Earl of Coventry was clean bowled for 0, Sir Frederick Hervey-Bathhurst was also clean bowled for 0 and Captain Trevor was bowled for 13.
At that point in this epic clash of cultures on the hallowed turf of Lords, it is fair to say that the Aborigines held the upper hand. They only needed to get 90 to achieve an historic victory. Unfortunately, things did not work out as they might have hoped. First of all Bullocky, for no apparent reason, had failed to turn up on the second day. He was marked down in the score book as ‘Absent ill ….... 0’. It was never fully established what the problem was, but anyone who has been on a cricket tour can imagine the possible scenario. There you are at the bar drinking with your new mates, the Earl and the Viscount. They invite you on for a few more and before you know it, you are Brahms and Liszt and unable to get up in the morning. It could happen to anyone.
On top of this, Charles Lawrence was injured and had to have a runner. Almost inevitably there was a mix up and he was run out. Mullagh failed with the bat for once, Cuzens hit a brave 21 but the rest collapsed to the slow bowling of Charles Buller. The Australians were all out for 45 and the MCC had won.
The Aborigines had not disgraced themselves. Well, Bullocky had but I think he can be forgiven. After the match, Dick-a-Dick invited the MCC members to pay a shilling and try and hit him with a cricket ball. None succeeded and he walked away with a tidy sum.
The tour moved on with games in South Wales, Yorkshire and Lancashire. The team found themselves travelling very long distances due to the itinerary being put together as they went along. Invitations to play were accepted and games arranged on an ad hoc basis with the result that they criss-crossed the country, on one occasion travelling from Rochdale to Swansea and then back the next day to Bradford.
While in Yorkshire, they played the Gentlemen of Sheffield at Bramhall Lane. Sheffield batted first and scored 233 with Mullagh taking 6 for 95. The Australians replied with 185, of which Mullagh scored 55. The most remarkable event was achieved by Twopenny (aka Murrumgunarrimin) in his innings of 22. He managed to score nine runs (all run, with no overthrows) in one hit. There is no record in any cricket match of this ever having been achieved either before or since.
The cricket correspondent for the Sheffield Independent described Twopenny’s extraordinary achievement:
“Twopenny made the sensational hit of the match, accomplishing a feat which has no parallel on Bramhall Lane, and we should say on no other ground. Mr Foster, who was well up, did not offer for some time to go for the ball and when he started it was at a slow pace. The result being that nine was run for the hit amidst vociferous cheering”.
This wonderful description of the fielder saying that he “did not offer for some time to go for the ball and when he started it was at a slow pace” could have come from almost any Ash Tree CC match in recent memory. I’ve no doubt that it will also strike a chord with many other Taverners players around the country.
The Australians were now halfway through their tour. So far it had been a great success. The English public seemed to take to the Aborigine players. They played the game in a good spirit, applauding their opponents onto the pitch and were clearly enjoying themselves. Although the team relied heavily on their three top players, the rest were excellent fielders and always entertaining. However, one thing had occurred that depressed and disheartened the whole touring party. One of their players had been taken ill suddenly.
King Cole had played in every game up to and including the match at Lords. He played in the next game at Southsea but soon afterwards developed a heavy chest cold that rapidly got worse. The tour moved on to Bishop Stortford but Lawrence took King Cole to London for treatment. They went by train to Paddington and then took a cab to Guy’s Hospital.
King Cole’s chest cold developed into pneumonia. There were no antibiotics to counter pneumonia in 1868 and the indigenous Australians were particularly susceptible to such illnesses. So it proved for King Cole. His condition deteriorated and he died in hospital four days later on 24th June.
It was a terrible blow for Lawrence and his team but the tour had to go on. They continued moving around the country. They beat Tynemouth and drew with Northumberland, Middlesborough and then Scarborough. Johnny Mullagh almost single-handedly beat Bootle. He scored 51 in the first innings and then 78 in the second. He also took eleven wickets in the match.
He wasn’t quite so successful with his boomerang display after the game. He threw his boomerang and a sudden gust of wind took it off course. Instead of coming back to him, it swooped over the crowd. One man did not duck in time and it hit him a resounding blow on the head. A doctor patched him up and all was well in the end.
Notwithstanding the boomerang incident, the Bootle captain presented Mullagh with fifty shillings after the game saying that he did not think that there was a better batsman in England.
The touring party moved south and had a return match against Sussex. The Australians did much better second time around and had the better of a drawn match. They also drew with Middlesex at Islington and with Surrey at the Oval again.
Twopenny had not been called upon to bowl much on the tour but he was let loose on East Hampshire at Southsea in the 43rd match. He had the remarkable figures of 9 for 9 in the first innings and 6 for 7 in the second. The opposition found his pace and hostility virtually unplayable. He bowled again in the next match against Hampshire and took 9 for 17 and 3 for 39. In two matches he had taken an incredible 27 wickets.
So why hadn’t Lawrence used him earlier in the tour? The most likely explanation is that his action was a bit suspect and Lawrence didn’t want to risk having him called for throwing early in the tour. If that had happened then it would have been bad publicity for the Australians and might have put future matches in jeopardy.
Twopenny became the first Aborigine to play first-class cricket on his return to Australia, when he played for New South Wales against Victoria in 1870. He failed to take a wicket in his 30 overs (0 for 56) and scored just eight runs. Although he was never called for throwing, it seems there was enough doubt to make it suspicious and he was not invited back to play.
There were just three matches to go on their tour of England. The Australians demolished a side from Reading. Mullagh got back in the action, taking 8 for 9 in the first innings and then went out and scored 94, the highest individual score on the tour. A draw against Godalming followed and then it was back to the Oval for one last game against Surrey.
John Constable Gregory, who had played twenty three first-class matches for Middlesex and Surrey, hit an undefeated 121, out of a Surrey total of 173. The Australians disappointed with the bat and were bundled out for 56 of which Bullocky top scored with 24. They batted much better in the second innings led by a fine knock of 63 from Johnny Cuzens, but Surrey only needed 27 to win which they scored, losing only one wicket.
The tour was over. The Australians had played forty seven games in 115 days. They had won 14, lost 14 and drawn the rest. The tour had been a financial success but none of the money went to the Aborigine players. They received no payment at all for the tour. On their return to Australia, they played a few games to wind down the tour and then the team dispersed.
As far back as 1860, the Central Protection Board for the Protection of Aborigines had been established in Victoria. In 1869, the State of Victoria passed the Aboriginal Protection Act. The word ‘protection’ was something of a euphemism. The Act gave the colonial Governor the power to control where each Aborigine lived, worked and carried out their business. The Board had
wanted to stop the 1868 tour going ahead but did not have the statutory right to do so. Now they did.
Their argument was that they did not want Aborigines to be exploited. To an extent, the Aborigines that Lawrence took to England in 1868 were exploited by him. They received no payment for their efforts. The number of games they played and the huge amount of travelling involved must have been incredibly tiring. They had to put on a show after every game to demonstrate their native skills and entertain the English public.
And yet, and yet. They were welcomed everywhere they went. They were treated as equals in a way that they never were in their homeland either before they left or when they got back. They clearly enjoyed their cricket and showing off their skills with boomerang, spear and whips. And they got to play at Lords!
Of all the Aborigine players on the tour, Johnny Mullagh was the undoubted star. He was considered by many as the equal of any batsman in England at the time. He played in 45 of the 47 matches and scored 1,698 runs at an average of 23.65. This was at a time when any batting average over 20 was considered to be extremely good indeed. Many of the pitches were in a very poor state, and batting was significantly more difficult than it is today. He also bowled 1877 overs, taking 245 wickets at an average marginally over 10 apiece.
On his return, he joined Melbourne Cricket Club as a professional. For whatever reason, it didn’t really work out for him. He only played six games, with moderate success, and he went back to his club side the following season. He scored so many runs for them that, nine years later, in 1879, he was picked to play for Victoria against Lord Harris’s England side. He top scored in the second innings and the Melbourne Argus praised him for his “long reach, his cool artistic style, his judicious treatment of dubious balls and his vigorous drives”.
Despite this performance, Mullagh was not selected for Victoria again. One can only speculate about the reasons for this. He went back to his job as a shearer and continued playing for his club side. In 1884, at the age of forty three, he was picked for a combined club side at the Adelaide Oval. He scored 43 not out against an attack that included George Giffen, the Australian all rounder. Johnny Mullagh continued playing cricket until a few months before his death in 1891 at the age of fifty.
No Aborigine player, or player who acknowledged that he had Aborigine blood, represented Australia for the next one hundred years. At least three Aborigine players during that period were generally considered good enough to play for Australia – Alec Henry, Jack Marsh and Eddie Gilbert – but none of them did. The reason that they didn’t was almost certainly due to overt racism in Australian society during that time. All three were ‘no balled’ at the height of their powers; in Gilbert’s case, days after clean bowling Don Bradman in a Sheffield Shield match for a duck.
Many years later, in 1996, Jason Gillespie became the first male cricketer4 who acknowledged his Aboriginal heritage to play for Australia. Gillespie’s father is of Scottish, German and Aboriginal ancestry, while his mother has a Greek and Irish background. Gillespie did not make a big issue of his Aboriginal heritage but he did not deny it. It is believed that other players before him had Aborigine blood but could not admit it because of the prevailing prejudice of the time. Graeme Thomas toured South Africa in 1965/66 and there was some speculation at the time that he had Aborigine blood. South Africa would probably have refused him entry (as they did with D’Oliveria in 1969) and the Australian cricket authorities encouraged the thought that Graeme Thomas was of North American origin. Apparently that was acceptable to Mr Vorster and his cronies.
Jason Gillespie went on to become one of Australia’s all time great bowlers. Only five players have taken more wickets for Australia than Gillespie5 but he had a difficult time in the 2005 Ashes series and was dropped after the third Test. Gillespie returned to Australia and bounced back to be the leading bowler in the 2005/06 domestic season. He was selected to play in the two match series against Bangladesh and he made his mark in an impressive fashion.
In the First Test, Bangladesh won the toss and batted, scoring 427. When it was Australia’s turn to bat, they were reduced to 93 for 6. Only a spectacular 144 from Adam Gilchrist saved the day. A gross injustice to Bangladesh you could say. Gillespie had the next highest score with 26. Second time around, Bangladesh only managed 148 and Australia were set 307 to win. A Ricky Ponting unbeaten century just about saw them home with three wickets to spare.
During the opening Test which was played at Fatullah, Australia’s security manager had spotted, on closed circuit TV , a gunman in a black bandanna in the crowd. He rushed towards him only to discover that the man was in fact a member of the government’s Rapid Action Brigade, assigned to protect the Australian team. A keen cricket lover, he had been using the telescopic sight on his rifle to get a better view.
In the second Test at Chittagong, a few days later, Bangladesh again batted first. Gillespie followed up his five wickets in the previous match by taking the first three wickets in four overs. Bangladesh were all out for 197 on the first day and Australia started their first innings. When Hayden was out just before the close, Gillespie was asked to go in as nightwatchman.
The use of a nightwatchman in cricket is a curious concept. The batting side loses a wicket near the end of the day and it is considered very important not to lose another one before the close of play. So, instead of sending in a player who can bat, is in the side for his batting and who presumably is best equipped to deal with the bowling and prevailing conditions, a lesser batsman is sent out. Quite often the nightwatchman is out before the close which of course completely defeats the object. Even if he survives, he is usually out quickly the next day or hangs around not making very many runs. Either way, the initiative is handed to the fielding side.
Steve Waugh didn’t agree with the idea of a nightwatchman and did not use them when he was captain. Luckily for Gillespie, Waugh wasn’t in charge in Bangladesh and so he got his chance. Gillespie had already shown his worth as a nightwatchman in October 2004 against India, when he had batted for four hours with Damien Martyn to help save the second Test in Chennai. In Bangladesh, he did even better.
Going in as nightwatchman in the second Test, at Chittagong, Gillespie batted for a total of nine and half hours. He achieved something that had eluded Ian Chappell, Mark Waugh, Colin Cowdrey and Mike Atherton to name but a few. On the 19th April 2006, his 31st birthday, he scored a Test double century. His 201 not out was an incredible innings. OK, it was against Bangladesh but it was still a Test match and the Australians had struggled to win the first match. Gillespie had never even scored a first-class century before, his top score being 58. Australia went on to win the game and Gillespie was named man of the series.
This chapter started with an extraordinary Aboriginal tour of England in 1868, featuring Johnny Mullagh scoring a majestic 75 at Lords. It ends with Jason Gillespie, scoring a double century in his 71st and final Test match for Australia. The facts and figure are amazing, the stories behind them even more so.
3 Alverstone and Alcock’s Surrey Cricket: Its History and Association.
4 Faith Thomas played for the Australian women’s cricket team in 1958.
5 Warne, McGrath, Lillee, Lee and McDermott have taken more wickets.
3. West Indies tour of England, 1984
David Gower versus Clive Lloyd. Arthur Scargill versus Margaret Thatcher. Winston Smith versus Big Brother. These were the epic battles of 1984.
Winston Smith sounds like he should have been a West Indian fast bowler. He would have had his work cut out to get into the West Indies side in 1984 with Holding, Marshall and Garner in the team. In fact the West Indies did call up Winston Davis, who was playing for Glamorgan at the time, to play one Test on that tour when Marshall was out injured. He was a good player but only appeared in fifteen Tests for the Windies because the fast bowling competition was so great. If Davis had not been available, Wayne Daniel was playing for Middlesex, or they could have called on a promising youngster in the to
ur party – Courtney Walsh.
England on the other hand had Derek Pringle and Jonathan Agnew. No surprise then that the West Indies arrived at Worcester for the tour opener in a confident mood.
1984 doesn’t seem that long ago does it, but if you ask people under the age of forty about the Miners’ Strike of that year, most of them will look blankly at you. It will ring a bell with some of them but few will know any details or appreciate its significance. It’s the same with Larry Gomes. Didn’t he play for Middlesex and then a few times for the West Indies?
Well yes, but Gomes actually played sixty Tests for the West Indies and had a batting average a fraction under 40. Together with Gordon Greenidge, it was Larry Gomes who was the batting star of the 1984 tourists, not Viv Richards or Clive Lloyd or Desmond Haynes. He scored 400 runs in the series compared to Richards’ 250.
Of course Sir Viv had his moments that summer. In the first One-Day International at Old Trafford he batted superbly to be 96 not out when the ninth wicket fell. Michael Holding joined him with the score at 166 for 9. In the last fourteen overs, Richards and Holding added 106 with Richards’ share being 93. His score of 189 not out is still the fourth highest individual score in all ODIs.6
As with hazy recollections of the Miners’ Strike and Larry Gomes, not everyone remembers that Eldine Baptiste played in all five Tests that tour or that Joe Gormley was the NUM President before Arthur Scargill. Joe Gormley allegedly worked for MI5 which is perhaps even more surprising than the fact that Baptiste bowled more overs than Michael Holding in the 1984 series. Eldine was a decent fielder too, as a startled Geoff Miller found out at Lords when he was run out at the bowler’s end by an 80 yard throw from fine leg.
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