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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lForgotten Aborigine team who changed cricket foreverBy Jamie Wilson 8 March 2002 - They were cricket's forgotten heroes - a team of Aborigines who came to England in 1868 viewed as little more than a joke, and ended up changing the face of cricket forever. Now a previously unseen archive of photographs, scorebooks and other memorabilia chronicling the first - and last - tour by native Australians has surfaced after languishing in an attic for more than 80 years. The archive of the 1868 tour - 10 years before the first "white" tour by an Australian team and 14 years before the Ashes tradition began - is expected to fetch £50,000 when it goes under the hammer at Christie's in Melbourne on March 26. When the boat carrying the indigenous team arrived at Gravesend, Kent, on May 13 1868, England was the bastion of cricket. It was inconceivable that a team from the colonies - let alone one comprising Aborigines - could provide a real challenge. But 14 wins later, several against some of the best sides in the country, this perception had been changed forever. The archive was assembled by Charles Lawrence, the manager, captain, and only white player in the team. Some 80 years after his death, it is being sold by his great-great-granddaughter, who found the collection in the attic of the family home in Queensland. Photographs show the Aborigines, who were made to play in barefeet and different colour hats, in typical Victorian team line-up pose. The team's legendary all rounder, Johnny Mullagh, who scored 1,698 runs and took 245 wickets during the tour, was described by one English pace bowler as one of the finest batsmen he had ever seen. The scorebook of the tour recorded that during one of the tour matches, in the days before boundaries, an Aboriginal player named Twopenny "made a drive (no overthrows) for nine", helping the team to a 154 run victory. "Afterwards the usual athletic sport by the blacks," the scorer had written. "Mullagh was throwing the boomerang when, the wind taken it among the crowd, it struck and severely injured a gentleman on the head." Christie's cricket specialist in Australia, Michael Ludgrove, described the discovery as stunning. "The Aboriginal players were born only a few years after they had given away the whole of Victoria literally for a few tomahawks, beads and mirrors," he said. "At home the population was being decimated by white settlers and those who played at Lord's were among the last of the original inhabitants of Australia. They came to England under the managership of Lawrence almost as a side show - circus freaks. But they turned out to be brilliant cricketers, having played on the settlers' stations for some years. They had a very good eye, were great fielders and very fast." The team were generally well received in England, and, apart from an ugly incident in York, there was little blatant racism. WG Grace, the father of English cricket, was even moved to say they showed "conspicuous skill at the game". Not everyone was so complimentary. The Times correspondent described the initiative as "a travestie [sic] upon cricket". The team arrived home the year the Aboriginal protection act became law, forcing Aborigines to relocate to missions and reserves. Most of the players returned to obscurity, and in many cases, premature death. No male Aborigine has represented Australia at cricket since. Source: The Guardian related links :
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its one year on from the Australian Governments controversial intervention into NT Indigenous communities
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