South Australia
Cricket is the most popular summer sport in South Australia and attracts big crowds. South Australia has a cricket team, the South Australian Redbacks, who play at Adelaide Oval in the Adelaide Park Lands during the summer; they won their first title since 1996 in the summer of 2010–11. Many international matches have been played at the Adelaide Oval; it was one of the host cities of 2015 Cricket World Cup, and for many years it hosted the Australia Day One Day International. South Australia is also home to the Adelaide Strikers, an Australian men's professional Twenty20 cricket team that competes in Australia's domestic Twenty20 cricket competition, the Big Bash League.
Culture of Australia
Cricket is Australia's most popular summer sport and has been played since colonial times. It is followed in all states and territories, unlike the football codes which vary in popularity between regions.
The first recorded cricket match in Australia took place in Sydney in 1803. Intercolonial contests started in 1851 and Sheffield Shield inter-state cricket continues to this day. In 1866–67, prominent cricketer and Australian rules football pioneer Tom Wills coached an Aboriginal cricket team, which later toured England in 1868 under the captaincy of Charles Lawrence. The 1876–77 season is notable for a match between a combined XI from New South Wales and Victoria and a touring English team at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which was later recognised as the first Test match. A famous victory on the 1882 tour of England resulted in the placement of a satirical obituary in an English newspaper saying 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 tradition continues with the Ashes series, an icon of the sporting rivalry between the two countries.