On 11 and 12 February 1851, teams from Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) and Port Phillip District (now Victoria) played the first cricket match between two Australian colonies, recognised in later years as the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia. It took place at the Launceston Racecourse, known now as the NTCA Ground, in Tasmania. The match was incorporated into celebrations marking the separation of the Port Phillip District from New South Wales in 1851 as the colony of Victoria.

The team representing Port Phillip, generally named "Victoria" in the press, was drawn from the Melbourne Cricket Club. The Van Diemen's Land team, designated "Tasmania" in newspapers, consisted of players from both Launceston and Hobart. The visiting team was expected to have an advantage through the use of fast overarm bowling. Cricket in Victoria was considerably more advanced than in Tasmania, whose bowlers operated underarm. The match, intended to be played to a finish with no limits on time, took place on a pitch that made batting difficult. As was usual practice at the time, overs comprised four deliveries and there was no set boundary.

John Marshall was the captain of the Van Diemen's Land team and William Philpott led the Port Phillip team, which batted first. The Victorian team found the home bowling difficult to face, on account of its unusually slow pace; in their first innings, they scored 82. Van Diemen's Land replied with 104, assisted by a large number of extras. The batsmen coped better than expected with the overarm bowling, although Thomas Antill took three wickets in four balls in returning figures of seven wickets for 33 runs. Batting again, the Victorian team scored 57, leaving the Tasmanian team needing 36 to win. When the first day's play ended due to bad light, Van Diemen's Land had scored 15 runs and lost six wickets. The next morning, the home team scored the required runs for the loss of one more wicket, recording a three-wicket victory. The match, which had been keenly anticipated, was a great attraction and was followed closely in the press in Melbourne. Additionally, there were many social events for the visiting team.

Following this match, intercolonial cricket became increasingly widespread; cricket in Australia became more popular and was given a boost when teams of English cricketers began to tour the country, leading to a rapid increase in the playing skill of Australian cricketers.

Background

It is uncertain precisely when and how cricket began to be played in Australia. It may have arrived along with the First Fleet from England but no records document this. Nevertheless, the game grew relatively quickly. The first recorded match in Australia took place in Sydney in 1803 between the military and civilians; according to the journalists Jim Kilburn and Mike Coward, in a review of Australian cricket, the New South Wales governor ordered that equipment for the game should be made in government workshops.Kilburn and Coward, pp. 61–62. Similar early games between the military and civilians took place in Tasmania and Victoria. The vast distances between the colonies initially prevented intercolonial cricket, but clubs quickly came into existence in the population centres and an element of competition soon arose.Kilburn and Coward, p. 62. A combination of the presence of the British military, the attraction of English pastimes that did not require sophisticated venues or practices, and a desire to develop a society similar to that of Britain made cricket an attractive outlet for Australians.Kaufman and Patterson, p. 20. By 1832, the Sydney Gazette was able to state that "cricket was now the prevailing amusement of the colony and that no gentleman could expect to 'dangle at a lady's apron strings' unless he could boast of his cricket prowess."Quoted in Kaufman and Patterson, p. 20. Matches began to be covered by newspapers, and the sport's popularity spread with the population.

One of the most prestigious clubs in Australia was the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC), which was formed in 1838, only three years after the founding of Melbourne. The MCC dominated cricket in Australia for the rest of the century.Dunstan and Coward, pp. 72–73. Although club membership was intended for the social elite, similar to that of leading English clubs at the time, its ability to secure the best cricketers in its teams made it enormously popular with spectators; the intention of the MCC seems to have been to spread cricket's popularity in a similar way to the Marylebone Cricket Club's efforts in England.

Cricket was less well-established in Tasmania, then known as Van Diemen's Land. Although cricket was probably played soon after the island was settled in 1803, and was reasonably popular by the mid-1810s, the first recorded matches took place only in 1825.Dunstan and Coward, p. 72. There was little organisation or competition; there were few clubs, and none in Hobart, in the south of Tasmania, until 1832, or in Launceston, in the north, until 1841. Partly, this may have been due to an insistence among Tasmanian clubs that only the social elite could play cricket. The cricket historian Jack Pollard suggests that Tasmanian cricket failed to thrive in its early years because of "the strange reluctance of the strong, prestigious clubs in Hobart and Launceston to hire professional players to coach and strengthen their teams". With these main cities apart, it was difficult to establish competitive games; despite an abandoned attempt in 1841, the first match between North and South Tasmania did not take place until 1850. These difficulties prompted Launceston cricketers to seek opponents from the Australian mainland rather than from Hobart.

Build-up On 12 January 1850, William Philpott—who was born in England and emigrated to Australia in 1844 before establishing himself as a leading figure at the MCCJackson, p. v.—proposed at a special MCC meeting that a cricketing challenge be sent to Launceston for a match between teams representing Port Phillip and Van Diemen's Land.Jackson, p. 6.

An invitation was sent to the Launceston Cricket Club in February with a view to playing that March. The invitation was accepted but the match was delayed when the acceptance letter was not posted in time to reach the steamer transporting mail. The MCC repeated their invitation later in 1850. While the match was being arranged, legislation passed in the United Kingdom to separate the Port Phillip District, which was to be renamed as Victoria, from the colony of New South Wales. When news of this much anticipated decision reached the colony late in 1850, two weeks of celebrations were arranged in Melbourne to mark independence. The delayed cricket match, now scheduled for February 1851, became part of the general festivities, although formal independence did not come about until later in 1851.Plowman, p. 13. Furthermore, the fixture was to be the first Australian intercolonial match and was later considered the first first-class cricket match in Australia.

The Melbourne Club decided that the team should wear red, white and blue colours on their clothing for the game.Jackson, p. 7. Although they had a long time to prepare, the MCC had some difficulty in assembling enough men to represent Port Phillip; many potential players were unable to spare the time to travel to Van Diemen's Land. Even as the team prepared to depart, only ten people had been found, and the eleventh, Duncan Cooper, only joined as they left on the steamer Shamrock. The eleven Victorian players, accompanied by many acquaintances, both men and women, arrived in Launceston on 9 February. On the evening of their arrival, they attended a dinner at the Cornwall Hotel with 100 paying guests. The following day, the team won a match against Bishopthorpe College. There was little time to practise before the intercolonial game.

The Port Phillip team were favourites before the game began. This was partly owing to their bowlers' use of overarm bowling at pace; by contrast, bowlers in Tasmania preferred underarm bowling at a time when roundarm bowling was permitted in the rest of the world. The match was played at the Launceston Racecourse ground, but the state of the ground was such that the umpires were unsure of the best place to pitch the wickets. The Victorian team were dismayed by the state of the pitch, which looked extremely difficult to bat on, and later received an apology from the government of Tasmania.Jackson, p. 8.

The team for Van Diemen's Land was drawn from across the island: three players came from Hobart, five from Launceston and three players from other individual clubs.

Match proceedings

The match began on 11 February 1851 and was scheduled to be played to a finish irrespective of time. It was well attended, and booths were set up to accommodate spectators. According to Ray Webster in his analysis of all Australian first-class matches, spectators were not charged for admission;Quoted in Jackson, p. 7. the attendance was approximately 1,000 on the first day and 1,500 on the second. In common with all cricket games at the time, each over consisted of four deliveries. Similarly, there were no boundaries to the pitch, so runs could be scored only by running between wickets, and not by hitting a boundary. Although the colonies were officially called Van Diemen's Land and Port Phillip at this point, press reports generally referred to the teams as "Tasmania" and "Victoria". The match was closely followed in Melbourne.

John Marshall captained the Tasmanian team, and William Philpott captained the Victorian team. The toss was won by Marshall, who sent in Victoria to bat. The match started at 11 am.

First innings The Tasmanians, bowling first, used their underarm style; the two bowlers, William Henty and Robert McDowall, had an unusually slow pace. The Port Phillip opening batsmen, Duncan Cooper and William Philpott, added 14 runs in 22 minutes before Cooper was bowled. A syndicated Tasmanian press report of the match described Philpott as batting "in fine style" before he was caught at mid-off. Thomas Hamilton and Charles Lister batted steadily before the former was bowled in the first hour, after which the score was 34 runs for the loss of three wickets. Hamilton was bowled and Lister run out; Alfred Thomson, who scored one run, was soon bowled to leave the score 42 for five. Richard Philpott, the elder brother of Victorian captain William Philpott, made 12 runs to bring the score up to 54, before he too was bowled, and Thomas Antill was dismissed for a duck. James Brodie hit out to score 17 runs, equalling William Philpott as the highest scorer of the innings. He was caught at slip. The last two wickets fell cheaply; Frederick Marsden and Matthew Hervey were both bowled, and Melmoth Hall remained not out on six. The Victorian team scored 82 in 26 four-ball overs in 125 minutes. Henty (four wickets at a cost of 52 runs) and McDowall (five for 27) bowled unchanged throughout the innings.