Arts/Hist: Cricket in Australia

 Australians have always found their own diversions, and football, has long been one of our national religions, but football fractured, splitting between rival codes. Our purer, undivided other national religion is cricket, and we have early evidence that it was also practised in Barrack Square, so we shall begin there. The earliest reference to cricket in Sydney was in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, in January 1804 [i], and by 1816, cricket was part of Christmas in Van Diemen’s Land:

Dancing and cricketing was in full perfection at Port Dalrymple; no accident occurred there, excepting a tea board making its exit, and the village lawyer being deprived of following his profession for a few days, by an unfortunate catastrophe which darkened his eye sight. [ii]

The young cricketer, George French Angas. [iii]

In 1858, more than 40 years before Australia was officially a nation, we had “the great international cricket match” in Melbourne. The nations in question were New South Wales and Victoria, and Victoria won by two runs, 59 to 57, before a crowd of 6000. [iv]

Then in the early 1860s, a genuine if mediocre English team came out to Australia, and beat larger Australian teams of 18 or 22 players, but in the 1840s, George French Angas had recognised a new species, the Australian young cricketer, and by 1873 – 74, the enlarged Australian teams were beginning to win, and W. G. Grace commented that the young colonials were turning into very good bowlers.

After Australia won a test match at The Oval in London in 1882, a British journal published a mock obituary, stating that English cricket had died, and “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”. After that, how could Australians not love cricket? In 1883, Richard Twopeny, a Briton who had gone native, wrote that good weather and town life explained why Australians so loved outdoor sports.

Cricket must, I suppose, take the first place amongst Australian sports, because all ages and all classes are interested in it; and not to be interested in it amounts almost to a social crime…[v]

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[i] The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 8 January 1804, 3, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/625962

[ii] The Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter, 4 January 1817, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/651835

[iii] National Library of Australia, PIC Solander Box C15 #T7 NK3840

[iv] The Star (Ballarat), 13 January 1858, 2, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/66046098

[v] Richard Twopeny, Town Life in Australia, ‘Amusements’.