The late great chronicler of Portsmouth Tim Backhouse shares a little-known but momentous event in the long and illustrious history of Hampshire cricket.
The first Australian cricket team to visit England was composed of Aborigines. It was led by former English cricketer turned Australia coach, Charles Lawrence, and was made up of stockmen who had been taught to play on Victorian cattle stations. The team came to England in 1868 and played 47 matches against county and club teams, preceding the first official Australian XI by ten years. Although some of the tourists were poor cricketers in comparison to their opponents two or three of them were of county standard and those few were largely responsible for the team losing only 14 of their matches.
The Aboriginal team played two matches against the East Hants Cricket Club at their Southsea ground – on the 15th and 16th of June and the 5th and 6th of October 1868. On the score cards the Aboriginals were referred to by soubriquets by which they had been known in Australia. Their native names, or approximations to them, are recorded in brackets below.
For the Aboriginals, Bullocky (Bullchanach) and Charles Lawrence overtook their opponents’ score without loss of a single wicket, the team going on to amass 144 all out. In their second innings East Hants could only accumulate 32 runs as Twopenny took 6 more wickets, leaving the Aboriginals winners by an innings and 61 runs. See the full scorecard at cricketarchive.com.
Image copyright Tim Backhouse 2013.
This article was originally published on Tim’s site History in Portsmouth.