The History of Australian cricket began over 210 years ago. The first recorded cricket match in Australia took place in Sydney in December 1803 and a report in the Sydney Gazette on 8 January 1804 suggested that cricket was already well established in the infant colony. By 1826, clubs including the Currency Cricket Club, the Military Cricket Club and the Australian Cricket Club had been formed. Hyde Park and the Racecourse were the venue for these organised matches. The formation of clubs in Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania) was not far behind with clubs formed in Hobart in 1832 and Launceston (1841). In Western Australia a match was arranged in 1835 between the "builders" (probably architects and engineers) of the new Government House and a team of labourers and "mechanics" (an archaic term for trades people). In what would later become Victoria, in 1838, the Melbourne Cricket Club was formed – it would become arguably Australia's most exclusive and influential cricket club. In 1839, a club was formed in South Australia.
Intercolonial cricket in Australia started with a visit by cricketers from Victoria to Tasmania in February 1851. The match was played in Launceston on 11–12 February with Tasmania winning by 3 wickets. Another three matches between the two teams were played before 1854 but in time the crossing of Bass Strait became less attractive to the Victorians and the focus turned to the neighbouring colony of New South Wales. These matches attracted large crowds, including a crowd of 15,000 at a match in Sydney in January 1853. Boards of control were formed in the various colonies: New South Wales in 1857, Victoria in 1864 and South Australia in 1871.
Early tours The first tour by an English team to Australia was in 1861–62, organised by the catering firm of Spiers and Pond as a private enterprise. Captained by HH Stephenson, the team largely consisted of cricketers from Surrey and while not wholly representative was reasonably strong. While the locals efforts, even when receiving odds, were mostly in vain, the tour was popular with spectators and highly profitable for the cricketers and promoters alike. A further tour followed in 1863–64, led by George Parr and was even more successful than the last.
First Australian team to tour England In 1866–67, Tom Wills, a troubled but brilliant sportsman who had captained the Victorian cricket team in 1856, led an all-Aboriginal cricket team on an Australian tour as its captain-coach. Another tour was launched in 1868, thus Aboriginal cricketers constituted the first Australian teams to tour England. The 1868 team was captained by Charles Lawrence, a member of Stephenson's team in 1861 who remained in Australia, and mainly recruited from the Harrow and Edenhope areas of the Wimmera region in western Victoria. Including outstanding cricketers such as Johnny Mullagh, the team played 47 matches, winning 14, drawing 19 and losing 14. In addition to cricket, the players demonstrated athletic prowess before, after and during games, including throwing boomerangs and spears. The heavy workload and inclement weather took its toll with King Cole contracting a fatal case of tuberculosis during the tour.
Further tours by English teams took place in 1873-74 (featuring the most notable cricketer of the age W.G. Grace) and 1876–77. The 1876-77 season was notable for a match between a combined XI from New South Wales and Victoria and the touring Englishmen at the Melbourne Cricket Ground played on 15–19 March. This match, later to be recognised as the first Test Match, was won by Australia by 45 runs, thanks mainly to an unbeaten 165 by Charles Bannerman. The result of this match was seen by Australians and Englishmen as a reflection of the rising standard of Australian cricket.
Origin of the Ashes and Sheffield Shield
The rising standards of Australian cricket was further established during the first representative tour of England in 1878. While the Australians did not play a representative English team on this tour, the efforts of players such as Billy Murdoch, Fred Spofforth and Jack Blackham attracted much public interest. A return visit in 1878–79 is best remembered for a riot and by the time Australia visited England in 1880, playing the first Test in England at The Oval, a system of international tours was well established. A famous victory on the 1882 tour of England resulted in the placement of a satirical obituary in an English newspaper, The Sporting Times. The obituary stated that English cricket had died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. The English media then dubbed the next English tour to Australia (1882–83) as the quest to regain The Ashes.
The Sheffield Shield, the premier first-class cricket competition in Australia, was established in 1892 by the Australasian Cricket Council, the first attempt at a national cricket board. The Shield was purchased from funds donated by Lord Sheffield, the financier of the English tour of 1891–92. The council was formed with representation from New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia and with the aim of regulating intercolonial cricket and organising international tours. This last aim met resistance from the leading players of the day such as George Giffen. The players had previously run tours as a private enterprise, splitting profits amongst themselves and were unwilling to relinquish control of appointing a captain and team selection. Conflict between players and administrators would become a running theme in Australian cricket.
Golden Age and the Great War The era from the mid-1890s to the World War I has been described as Australian cricket's golden age. This era saw the emergence of players such as Monty Noble, Clem Hill and in particular Victor Trumper, who was idolised by the Australian public. It also saw the continuing battle between the Melbourne Cricket Club and the players on one side with the state boards and the new Australian Board of Control on the other. The dispute was over the organisation of international tours and the revenue streams it created. It culminated in 1912 with the withdrawal of six leading players; Trumper, Hill, Warwick Armstrong, Vernon Ransford, Albert Cotter and Hanson "Sammy" Carter from the tri-nations series in England that year and a fistfight between Hill and his fellow selector Peter McAlister. The tour was unsuccessful and dogged by controversy.
The Great War lead to the suspension of both international and Sheffield Shield cricket and the enlistment of many cricketers in the AIF. After the war, a team consisting of cricketers enlisted in the AIF toured the United Kingdom. The Australian Imperial Forces cricket team was strong, including cricketers such as Herbie Collins, Bert Oldfield and the all-rounder, Jack Gregory, all of whom would play a large part in the fortunes of the national team in the future.
Between the wars: Bradman and Bodyline
International cricket recommenced with a tour by a weakened England team in 1920–21. The strong Australian team, led by Armstrong and with a bowling attack spearheaded by Gregory and Ted McDonald won the series 5–0, the first time this was achieved in an Ashes series. The 1920s was an era of batting dominance. The Victorian opening batsman, Bill Ponsford was the chief destroyer of bowling attacks, scoring 429 against Tasmania in 1922–23 and topping that in 1927–28 with an innings against Queensland of 437. In between these innings, in 1926–27, his Victorian team made 1,107, the highest first class innings total to date. Ponsford's contribution was a mere 352.
However, the greatest run machine in the history of Australian cricket was yet to come. Don Bradman, born in Cootamundra and raised in Bowral was 20 when he made his Test debut in the first Test of the 1928–29 series against England. He made 18 and 1 and was promptly dropped for the next Test. Recalled for the third Test in Melbourne, he scored 112 in the second innings to establish his place in the team for the next twenty years. During his illustrious career, he would hold the records for the highest individual Test innings and the most centuries in Test cricket and when he retired in 1948 he had the highest Test batting average, the last a record he still holds. He scored 117 first class centuries, still the only Australian to score a century of centuries and was knighted for services to cricket.
All that was still to come for Bradman when he toured England with the Australian team in 1930. Bradman scored heavily, 974 runs at an average of 139.14 including a then world record 334 at Leeds, two other double centuries and another single. Watching these displays of batting was Douglas Jardine, playing for Surrey. Following discussions with other observers such as Percy Fender and George Duckworth, he developed a tactic to limit the prodigious run scoring of Bradman and the others. The tactic, originally called fast leg theory and later called bodyline involved fast short pitched bowling directed at the batsman's body and a packed leg side field. Appointed captain of England for the 1932-33 series in Australia, Jardine was able to put these theories into practice.
Combined with bowlers of the speed and accuracy of Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, the tactic required batsmen to risk injury in order to protect their wicket. In the third Test in Adelaide, Larwood struck Australian captain Bill Woodfull above the heart and fractured wicket-keeper Bert Oldfield's skull. The crowd was incensed and public feeling in Australia was high. A minor diplomatic incident ensued and for a time it appeared that cricketing relations between the two nations would be cut and the tour called off. Eventually diplomacy prevailed and the tour continued, England winning the series 4–1. The effect of bodyline can be seen by looking at Bradman's batting average, a respectable 56.57, the highest for Australia that series, but much lower than his Shield average of 150 over the same period.
In December 1934, the Australian women's team played the English women in the first women's Test match at the Brisbane Exhibition Ground. Despite a 7 wicket haul to Anne Palmer in the first innings, the English women were too strong and won by 9 wickets.
Post War consolidation Once again, war brought a stop to Shield and Test cricket as Australia mobilised for World War II. Immediately after the end of the war in Europe in 1945, an Australian Services XI played a series of Victory Tests in England. The team was captained by Lindsay Hassett and it saw the emergence of the charismatic all-rounder Keith Miller. The series was drawn 2–2. After the retirement of Bradman in 1948, Hassett, Miller and all-rounder Ray Lindwall formed the nucleus of the Australian team. They were later joined by leg spinning all-rounder, Richie Benaud and batsman Neil Harvey.
In 1951 Menzies enthusiasm for cricket, lead him to inaugurate the annual Prime Minister's XI cricket match in 1951 at Manuka Oval in Canberra. Robert Menzies favourite pastime or 'obsession' as some say was to watch and follow cricket. The first game was against the visiting international team the West Indies. Menzies was a trustee of the Melbourne Cricket Club and knew many cricketers including Donald Bradman whom he declared was the 'undisputed master batsman of his time'. Menzies found cricket a useful diplomatic tool that Commonwealth nations had in common, as he stated that Great Britain and Australia were of the same blood, allegiance, history and instinctive mental processes.Hutchins, B:"Social-Conservatism, Australian Politics and Cricket: The Triumvirate of Prime Minister John Howard, Sir Robert Menzies and Sir Donald Bradman", Journal of Australian Studies, no.67, 2001.