WHAT’S THE STORY?

IT was 150 years ago tomorrow that arguably the most extraordinary match in the history of cricket was played at the Oval in London, home of Surrey Cricket Club.

It was the first match ever played between an English side and a touring team from Australia and what made it very notable in the annals of sport was that the visiting team consisted of 13 indigenous people from the State of Victoria.

They were not only the first Australian cricket team to tour outside of their native land, they were the first organised touring side in any Australian sport to arrive in England.

By the end of that first match, some 20,000 spectators had attended the Oval.

Over the next five months they played 47 matches against intermediate-level English teams, but that game against Surrey Gentlemen on May 25, 1868, is the one that has gone into the history books.

WHO WERE THESE PIONEERS?

THE men were all from the Jardwadjali, Gunditjmara and Wotjobaluk areas of Western Victoria, and as well as their native names they rejoiced in “English” names such as King Cole (Bripumyarrimin), Dick-a-Dick (Jungunjinanuke), Twopenny (Murrumgunarriman), Bullocky (Bullchanach) and Johnny Mullagh (Unaarrimin) who was their best player.

They were coached and captained by a former all-England cricketer, Charles Lawrence, an ex-pat who decided to cash in on the Victorian public’s curiosity regarding “exotic races” – it was, after all, just nine years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

SO IT WASN’T ALL SWEETNESS AND LIGHT FOR THE TEAM, THEN?

EVEN at home the tour faced strong opposition from the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines in Victoria, which feared that the Aboriginal players would struggle to survive the dismal English weather – as we shall see, one of the 13 did not go home alive.

Charles Lawrence got round the opprobrium by smuggling the players from Victoria into Sydney, where they boarded a wool-carrying clipper bound for the UK on February 8, 1868.

Former Australian test cricketer Ashley Mallett, author of a book about the tour, Lords’ Dreaming, told the BBC he didn’t believe the players were coerced.

He said: “The players would have been happy for all the attention. In Australia at that time, Aboriginal people were treated very badly. Racism was rife.”

As it was in London...The Times thundered on their arrival that the visitors were “a travestie upon cricketing at Lord’s” and were “the conquered natives of a convict colony.”

Reporting on the first match The Times was a little less condemnatory but nevertheless condescending: “Having been brought up in the bush to agricultural pursuits under European settlers, they are perfectly civilised and are quite familiar with the English language.”

Ditto The Telegraph: “Although several of them are native bushmen, and all are as black as night, these Indian fellows are to all intents and purposes, clothed and in their right minds.”

BUT THEY WON OVER THE SCEPTICS?

INDEED. They lost their first five matches but by the end of the tour they had won 14, lost 14, and had the better of the home sides in most of the drawn matches.

They were a hit with the public everywhere they went because their cricket improved and they gave demonstrations of activities such as boomerang throwing.

The Sporting Life of May, 1868, reported that they “gave great satisfaction to a critical coterie of spectators” and added: “They are the first Australian natives who have visited this country on such a novel expedition, but it must not be inferred they that they are savages.”

THEY WERE STRUCK BY TRAGEDY?

THEY were. One player, King Cole (Bripumyarrimin) died of tuberculosis and pneumonia.

GONE AND NOT FORGOTTEN?

EXACTLY. In 2002, the Aboriginal XI was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. Also that year, a documentary film about the team titled A Fine Body of Gentlemen was broadcast. Sadly, Aborigines were effectively banned from cricket in 1869 and no-one of indigenous blood represented Australia until Jason Gillespie in 1996.