Australia In Sunderland

Keith Gregson

Description

On the 9th August 2013 the Australian cricket team will step onto the Emirates Durham International Cricket Ground for a history making Ashes Test - the first ever on Durham soil. However there is a already a solid historical link between Australia and the county and nowhere is this more obvious than in ten matches arranged between Australia and a variety of sides in Sunderland between 1878 and 1977. Sports historian and archivist Keith Gregson has unearthed some remarkable documents and photographs in order to tell the tale of these games as part of the celebrations for this ground-breaking sporting event.

Sujets

• Críquet
• History of sport
• Australia
• Cricket

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 30 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780924151
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
AUSTRALIA IN SUNDERLAND
The Making of a Test Match


by
Keith Gregson



Publisher Information
First edition published in 2013
© Copyright 2013 Keith Gregson
Digital conversion by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of Keith Gregson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this book, as of the date of publication, nothing herein should be construed as giving advice. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and not of MX Publishing.
Published in the UK by MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Cover design by www.staunch.com



Introduction
During the summer of 2013, County Durham will host an ‘ashes’ cricket test match! Incredible but true. For those who have watched cricket during the post war years, this is the final page of the final chapter of a fairy tale which began to turn to reality in the 1990s with Durham County’s move from minor county to first- class cricket status. For many cricket lovers, this move occurred virtually out of the blue and was followed with almost whirlwind speed by the opening of the new ground at Chester le Street. After a predictably laboured start, the new county began to enjoy success on the field and by the 21 st century the 1 st XI was winning trophies and providing the England side with local players and, at one point, a successful locally born captain in Paul Collingwood. In time, the Riverside ground started to be used for representative matches - at first one day internationals then test matches. Now it has achieved the pinnacle of cricketing success - the hosting of a test match between England and Australia.
Moving into reverse gear and back one hundred and thirty five years we find equal excitement in Sunderland; in those days a town and part of the administrative county of Durham; today a city, post-coded ‘Tyne and Wear’ but still loyal to its ancient sporting county. This excitement was due to the impending arrival of the first official Australian cricket team to visit these shores. The date was September 1878 and the visitors’ opponents were to be the XVIII (18) Gentlemen of Sunderland. The Australians were to visit Sunderland to play cricket on a further nine occasions over the following hundred years. One more game was arranged against the Sunderland gentlemen, seven against minor county Durham and the final match, in 1977, was against a Minor Counties select side. Most of these games attracted large crowds and were a financial success. The visitors were also treated royally - a point that was often mentioned by tour officials at post match gatherings.
When Durham became a first class county and both its 1 st XI and its new ground continued to build up relations with Australian cricket, the Sunderland legacy must have been hovering in the background. As this relationship reaches a triumphal conclusion with the 2013 ashes test, there could be no better time to tell the tale of Sunderland’s long standing relationship with Australian cricket. In truth, the cheeky subtitle of this booklet - ‘The Making of a Test Match’ - is aimed at attracting the attention of potential readers and if you are reading this, it must have worked. Nevertheless there must be some inkling of justification in using it the phrase as, hopefully, the following pages will make clear.
Sunderland Cricket and Ashbrooke
Of the ten games arranged against touring Australian sides in Sunderland, eight were pencilled in to take place at the Ashbrooke ground - home of Sunderland Cricket Club since 1887.The cricket club which also exists in another guise as a section of the wider Ashbrooke Sports Club (originally Sunderland Cricket and Football (Rugby) Club) played for many years in the Durham Senior League. At the turn of the century in 2000, the 1 st XI entered and won the new prestigious North East Premier League. In 2012, year of the ground’s 125 th anniversary, both the 2 nd and 3 rd XIs championed their respective leagues while first team bowler Kieran Waterson was chosen as league player of the year. A couple of years before, on the publication of a major work on sport in general, historians had earmarked Sunderland CC as the oldest established sports club in the ‘sport-hungry’ Tyne and Wear region. The cricket club dates back to 1834 and possibly much earlier.
The overarching Ashbrooke Sports Club is also home to sections known separately as Sunderland Rugby, Tennis, Hockey, Bowls and Squash Clubs and is used as a base for Sunderland Strollers running club. The overarching club has a magnificent archive and the material for cricket history is particularly full, stretching back well into the nineteenth century. The archive of photographs and written material covers not only the history of Sunderland Cricket Club but also that of Minor County Durham for whom Ashbrooke was virtually the home ground. Much of the story about to be told has been made possible due to the written sources in the Ashbrooke archives supplemented by cricket coverage in local papers such as the invaluable Sunderland Echo . The first two games against the Australians were played at one of the cricket club’s former grounds on the road out of the town to Chester le Street.
I would like to thank all the staff at Ashbrooke Sports Club and Sunderland City Library for their assistance in researching this book. The errors, however, are my own.
KG
Ashbrooke, Sunderland, 2013



Game One
XVIII Gentlemen of Sunderland v Australia 1878
In the middle of September 1878, the very first Australian national cricket side to visit England ended its tour with a match in Sunderland against the Gentlemen of Sunderland. There was a very large crowd and the home side ran out victors. Left thus, this result makes for dramatic reading yet, in truth, the victory was not as glorious as may at first appear. Nevertheless the story of the game and its place in local and national cricketing history is one worth retelling.
In 1878, cricket was not the game it is today. The sport’s origins are lost in the mists of time and cricket only started to develop into the modern game in the 1860s when Wisden began to report on events on the field of play. By the following decade, the structure of the modern county cricket game was in place. The first test match between England and Australia had been played in 1877 but test cricket was yet to make its presence known on English soil. Sunderland had a cricket side, initially known as Bishopwearmouth and recently recognised as the oldest established sport club in Tyne and Wear but as yet there was no sign of the Durham County Cricket Club we know today. This had to wait until 1882 although a variety of teams had used the Durham County name already- including one that had played against an MCC side in Sunderland in 1876.
When the Australians landed in England in 1878, they brought only 12 players. The British public were wary of them. As one cricket historian noted when editing early ‘Wisdens’, most English folk at the time thought only of transportation and criminals when Australia was mentioned. This view rapidly changed when the Australians put a very strong MCC side to the sword and this game was to prove the nearest to an official test match on the tour. From then onwards, the visitors were on the lips of every sporting devotee and everyone wanted to see the ‘famous’ Australians and, in particular, Fred Spofforth their fast bowler who had gained the nickname The ‘Demon’.
By the time the Australians reached Sunderland, excitement had reached fever pitch. They had already played 36 matches - the vast majority of them ‘against the odds’. This was where a traditional side of 11 players took on a less experienced team of 18, 20 or 22 players. This kind of match attracted considerable interest as well as an increasingly lucrative gate receipts as the tour progressed.
The final match of the tour, played as the town’s rugby side was in the throes of beginning its season, was between the tourists and 18, classically XVIII, ‘Gentlemen of Sunderland’. In many ways the team’s name was a misnomer - there were 18 players but not all of them were from Sunderland and not all of them would have been classed as ‘Gentlemen’ in their day. It was common practice in matches of this type to bring in professional cricketers from outside to make a game of it and to play alongside a mixture of competent local amateurs and other who presumably had used their influence to ensure involvement in a prestigious local event. In addition, the professionals were brought in to spice things up for the bookmakers and their clients.
As far as the 1878 XVIII of Sunderland is concerned, players can be divided into four categories - ‘crack’ professionals, regional professional/competent amateurs, local amateurs and ‘the rest’.
The two best known and most competent professionals to play for the home side were both bowlers, Ted Barratt of Surrey and Tom Emmett ‘the Yorkshire crack’. They were hailed in advance by the local press as ‘among the best professional bowling that England could produce’. Barr