Spirit On The Water Read Free Page B

in the Great Britain , arriving in Melbourne on Christmas Eve. The Australians embraced the visitors with open arms in 1861, much like they do today but possibly for different reasons. Unlike today, the Australians were not expecting to win every match. Links with the mother country were still very strong and any contact was welcome. 15,000 people turned up to watch the first game on New Year’s Day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
    To make the games more even, most of the Australian teams fielded twenty-two players, as in Twenty-Two of Victoria and Twenty-Two of Castlemaine. The tourists played twelve matches, but they were not classified as first-class. They won six and lost two, with four drawn. It was very much a goodwill tour with the Australian hospitality often overwhelming. William Caffyn wrote “Scarcely a day passed without our being entertained to champagne breakfasts, luncheons and dinners.” In the circumstances, they did well to lose only two games!
    In January 1862, they played a match at Sydney. The Secretary for Lands, John Robertson, controversially allowed the promoters to charge admission to the public while arranging a free stand for parliamentarians. Some things never change!
    Towards the end of the tour, Stephenson’s team divided for a match at the MCG that was billed as The World versus a Surrey XIand was designated as a first-class match. The six Surrey players were joined by five locals, who supposedly had Surrey affiliations, to form the Surrey XI. The World XI was made of the six non-Surrey tourists and another five locals. The World XI won by six wickets thanks to an impressive all-round performance by George Bennett who scored 72 and then took 7 for 30 and 7 for 85.
    The tour was a great success and Charles Lawrence enjoyed himself so much that he accepted an invitation to stay on as professional cricket coach at the Albert Club in Sydney. He thought that there was money to be made in Australia and tried to persuade some of the other members of the team to stay on. However, they all sailed home to England leaving Lawrence with his dreams and plans.
    He recorded in his diary that he had formed the idea of teaching the Aborigines cricket after seeing them throwing boomerangs and spears. He felt sure that, if he could take them to England, he would make his fortune.
    Australia rather than North America became the preferred destination for cricket tours from England. George Parr brought another England team back to Australia in 1863/64 and the game really began to take off. Meanwhile in North America, baseball was establishing itself as the national game. If it hadn’t been for the American Civil War, the development of cricket might have been very different.
    Babe Ruth would probably have made a useful cricketer, but the Australians would have had a great time sledging a player whose first name was Babe and second name was Ruth. Joe DiMaggio was six years younger than Don Bradman and could have been a serious rival. I’m sure that Marilyn Monroe would have been welcomed at Lords, but obviously would not have been allowed in the Long Room.
    Meanwhile, Charles Lawrence was pursuing his dream of taking an Aborigine team to England. Aborigines had been playing cricket for a few years and he got together a group of players with the intention of taking them to England. They had a number of warm up games before departing from Sydney on 8 th February 1868. Also on board the ship to England was a much-travelled clergyman, Henry Nisbett, who wrote about his travels. His journal has daily entries from the time they left Sydney to when they docked at Gravesend on 13 th May. At no point does he mention that there were thirteen Aborigines on board. Did he fail to notice them? Did he think they were not worth mentioning?
    The only conclusion one can draw is that it reflects the narrow-minded thinking of some people at the time. It just wouldn’t do to acknowledge the existence of some ‘dark skinned’