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Aboriginal side returns to blaze a trail

20 August 2001 - It's taken more than 130 years, but the second tour of England by an Aboriginal cricket side has finally begun.

The first tour in 1868 predated the arrival of a white Australian team by a decade and the players battled cold conditions, a heavy playing schedule and the death of one of their team from tuberculosis before returning home with a record of 14 wins, 14 losses and 19 draws in 126 days.

But despite the side's remarkable record for stamina and its promising showing, Aboriginal cricket has largely failed to take off in the 133 years since.

Current Test bowler Jason Gillespie is the only acknowledged Aboriginal player to don the baggy green cap - although the coach of the latest indigenous team, legendary spinner Ashley Mallett, believes several others have played for Australia in the past but have hidden their heritage.

Mallett, who watched his side lose to an experienced MCC XI at Lord's last Friday in its opening match of the three-week tour, blames ingrained racism for the failure of indigenous players to represent their country.

He points to Eddie Gilbert, one of the few bowlers to dismiss Don Bradman for a duck, and Jack Marsh, who played six matches for NSW and took 34 wickets at an average of 21.47.

"Marsh was acknowledged as the best bowler in the world at the time and he was no-balled out of the game," Mallett said.

"I suspect it was [racism]. He was only no-balled to keep him out of the Test side. There are ways and ways, aren't there?

"An umpire can no-ball someone for throwing even if he doesn't throw, and I suspect that's what happened. I suspect quite a few Aboriginal players have actually played for Australia before Jason Gillespie, but they never owned up to it because if they had, they wouldn't have played."

But team captain Barry Firebrace has another explanation for the scarcity of top-level Aboriginal cricketers.

"A lot of Aborigines seem to go towards AFL because it's a lot easier to get into. They get the contracts and the money at a young age and they just stick to playing football," Firebrace said.

"Cricket, you've got to hang at it a bit more, especially being Australia and there's only 12 players; AFL - 44 players in a list, 16 teams - it's a lot easier."

Firebrace has to make a choice after training with AFL club Hawthorn this year. "I have to pick between the two. But after this tour I'm going to go towards cricket for sure," he said.

Mallett said the tour, which continues today against Kent, was a pathway for young indigenous cricketers who were "trailblazers".

Source:The Sydney Morning Herald

Aborigines wanted

Justin Lichterman

30 December, 2002 - Most of the talk about cricket and race revolves around South Africa and the need for transformation in post-Apartheid cricket. In Australia, however, cricket lags behind Aussie Rules football and Rugby in terms of popularity among Aboriginal populations and remains largely the domain of players of white, Anglo-Saxon backgrounds. All that could change if the ACB follows Dennis Lillee’s lead.

Lillee’s mission to unearth Aboriginal Test players is underway in Western Australia, the former fast bowlers home state. Lillee runs a fast bowling academy, and in his active search for fast bowling talent he has watched many young prospects with Aboriginal backgrounds.

“It has been a bit spasmodic in the past but we are trying to look at these kids,” Lillee said. “About 80% of the kids we have looked at have been of Aboriginal derivation and a few of them have the right attributes to bowl fast. We will try and coordinate trips to see them because we don't want to drag them out of their environments on a vague promise, and hopefully we can help them go through the system and play state cricket.”

Aboriginal involvement in Australian cricket is rare indeed. The first cricket team to tour England in 1868 was made up entirely of Aboriginal cricketers but since then only the fast bowler Eddie Gilbert, the former Surrey coach who once bowled Donald Bradman for a duck, has come close to representing Australia. Current Australian fast bowler Jason Gillespie, however, is reputed to have Aboriginal ancestry.

Cricket hopes to follow the model of the AFL by launching a coaching initiative within the indigenous population in an effort to break down racial barriers. About 10 years ago AFL administrators decided to promote the sport within the Aboriginal communities, and today many indigenous athletes play Aussie Rules. Similarly, the ACB hope that Aboriginal players will be more prominent within Australian club cricket sides ten years from now.

“The first step is to get indigenous cricketers playing together and then to get them in mainstream cricket,” said Ross Turner, the ACB's general manager of cricket development. “It's also about educating clubs so they know their role in the community and make it possible for indigenous cricketers to have trials.” Added Turner: “We want to open cricket up as much as possible. In the past it would have been difficult for a young indigenous cricketer to come through because traveling to play matches is expensive and it's a long process to come through the grade system. This programme hopefully will help young indigenous cricketers to make that breakthrough.”

The initiative to promote cricket among indigenous populations has the support of the Australian Sports Commission and is a first, baby-step step towards creating a multicultural Australian team.
The sight of an Aboriginal captain leading his side into an Ashes Test may be a distant dream but attitudes are finally changing and Australian cricket is at least beginning to redress its racial imbalance

Source:Cricket Online

related links :

• Australians broaden the game's horizons
  22 July, 2003 - cricInfo.com (UK) - The Australian cricketers should have been playing the final day of their Test match with Bangladesh today, but instead they spent the day eating buffalo and fishing with Aborigines on the remote Tiwi Islands north of Darwin.
• Wake up Australia, racism is a problem
  January 20, 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - The Darren Lehmann case has exposed a double standard in the Australian cricket community. Normally, moments of the highest pressure in sport are held to reveal character. Steve Waugh’s toughness and Shane Warne’s genius are revealed precisely in the heat of the moment.
• Aborigines cast spell over Norwich
  January 1, 2003 - Norwich Evening News - Probably the most remarkable team ever to appear in the city made their visit in the summer of 1868. That was when the touring Australian Aborigines took on club side Carrow, a match recalled in a newly-published book by Australia's former Test off-spinner, now journalist, Ashley Mallett.
• Aboriginal side returns to blaze a trail
  August 20, 2001 - It's taken more than 130 years, but the second tour of England by an Aboriginal cricket side has finally begun.
• Early tour of sideshows and insults
  August 28, 2001 - The first Aboriginal team to play in England arrived in 1868, 10 years before the first white team to reach British shores.

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