In 1884 W. L. Murdoch again brought over an Australian team to England, and played thirty-two matches, winning eight and losing seven. This time it was decided by the English authorities not to allow the fame of English cricket to depend on the result of one match only, but on the best of three, and accordingly three matches were arranged to be played between England and Australia, one at Manchester, the second at Lord’s, and the third at the Oval. The first, at Manchester, was seriously interfered with by the weather. Rain prevented any play on the first day. England began to bat on a sodden wicket and made 95, and Murdoch’s team responded with 182. England had now a difficult task to prevent being beaten, but at the end of the match were 92 runs on, and one wicket to fall. This was doubtless a draw in favour of the Australians, but still a hundred runs on a bad wicket against the flower of English bowling take a lot of getting, and it must be remembered that a month before the Australian team were all disposed of for 60 on a sticky wicket by Peate and Emmett. The second match was at Lord’s, and was the only one of the three that was finished. England won easily by an innings and 5 runs. The earlier teams of the Australians never appeared to advantage at Lord’s. The later ones, however, have done better on that ground. The third match, at the Oval, was a memorable one. The Australians won the toss, went in on a perfect wicket, and made the terrific score of 551: McDonnell 103, Murdoch 211, Scott 102. This was a truly great performance, and it was remarkable that every member of the English team tried his hand with the ball, by far the most successful having been the Honourable A. Lyttelton with the analysis of four wickets for 19 runs. England made 346 first innings, in which was a magnificent display from W. W. Read of 117. In the second innings England made 85 for two wickets, and thus required 120 runs on a true wicket with seven good batsmen to save the single innings defeat.
The next team that visited England was in 1886, H. J. H. Scott being the captain. This is memorable as the first Australian team in England that did not contain W. L. Murdoch. Several unknown men now made their appearance, W. Bruce, E. Evans, J. McIlwraith, and J. W. Trumble, but this was undoubtedly less successful than any of the previous teams. Their season’s record showed: Matches played, 38; won, 9; lost, 7; drawn, 22. Here again, as in 1884, England v. Australia was to be played at Manchester, Lord’s, and the Oval; but it is unnecessary to give an account of these three matches. It will suffice to say that at Manchester England won by four wickets, at Lord’s by an innings and 106 runs, and at the Oval by an innings and 217 runs.
The sixth Australian team visited us in 1888, and as W. L. Murdoch had at that time practically retired from first-class cricket, the captaincy devolved upon that sterling hitter, P. S. McDonnell. This team, though including some excellent players at all branches of the game, cannot be considered equal in merit to that of 1882. Three representative matches were again arranged, as in 1886. The first was played at Lord’s upon a wicket deluged with rain, and the Australians won in a small-scoring match by 61 runs. They won on their merits as the game was played, and the English batsmen on that occasion deserved to lose. On a most difficult wicket, and against C. T. B. Turner and J. J. Ferris’s bowling, they poked and scraped about, and seemed utterly unable to realise what each Australian batsman had done, viz. that to make runs under such circumstances the bat must be used vigorously. Though the Australians here scored their second success since 1878 in England in a representative match, the supporters of England were in nowise satisfied that the Australians had the better side. Two really good bowlers their opponents had in Turner and Ferris, but no one else on their side had any pretensions to being called first-class in this department of the game. Their batting, taken as a whole, was weak—McDonnell, of course, was a fine player, but the rest could not be compared to our best English batsmen. Then their fielding was hardly up to the standard of previous colonial teams. Altogether the English side did not fear the result of the next two matches if played under ordinary conditions of weather and luck. The second match, at the Oval, resulted in a win for England by an innings and 137 runs, and the third, played at Manchester, in another win for the same side by an innings and 21 runs. The feature of the season’s cricket played by this side was the bowling of C. T. B. Turner and J. J. Ferris. Turner’s analysis was remarkable—314 wickets for 3,492 runs, giving the excellent average of 11·38. This bowler is undoubtedly entitled to take rank amongst the really great bowlers of this generation of cricketers. J. J. Ferris, though he met with wonderful success this season (1888), was never in the same class as C. T. B. Turner.
The next Australian team that came to England was in 1890, and W. L. Murdoch, after five years’ absence from first-class cricket, consented to once again act as captain. The result of this trip was anything but a success from a cricket point of view, and indeed the team was not competent to cope with England’s best. Six of this team made their first visit to England, viz. Messrs. Charlton, Gregory, Walters, Barrett, H. Trumble, and Burn. The batting of this team was distinctly indifferent, though Murdoch showed on occasions he had not altogether lost his skill; he was not, however, the Murdoch of 1882. Messrs. Turner and Ferris again bore the brunt of the attack; they each took the same number of wickets during the tour, viz. 215. The former’s average was slightly the better of the two; how, in view of Ferris’s performances since 1890 in England, he managed to run Turner so close for the highest bowling honours will always remain a mystery. The first of the three representative matches England won by seven wickets at Lord’s. The feature of this match was that, though the Australians made 132 and 176 and the English team 173 and 137 for 3 wickets, there was not one bye scored to either side in the match. This is a wonderful testimonial to J. M. Blackham and G. McGregor, the respective wicket-keepers for Australia and England. The second match England v. Australia was played at the Oval, and a good game resulted in the defeat of the latter by two wickets; it was a close finish, and the Australians deserved great credit for so nearly defeating such a powerful side as represented England on that occasion. The third match, arranged to be played at Manchester, was never even begun owing to the incessant rain which deluged the ground on all three days.
In 1893 the eighth Australian eleven came over, and carried with it great hopes of their own countrymen. It had some good batsmen—Trott, Lyons, Bannerman, Giffen, Bruce, Graham, and Gregory, but none of them except Giffen could then compare with the best English bats, and Giffen, for some reason, has never done himself justice as a batsman in any of these trips. The bowlers were Turner, H. Trumble, Giffen, R. McLeod, Trott, and Bruce. Giffen at times bowled very finely, and Turner bowled well, but not so successfully as of yore. H. Trumble also proved himself to be an excellent bowler, but the combination was not strong enough, especially in a fine season, to win the rubber against England. Unfortunately only one of the three matches was finished, and this resulted in a win for England by an innings and 43 runs.
In 1896 the ninth eleven that visited England, under the leadership of Trott, proved a good side, far the best that had been over since 1884, and from this date the efficiency of Australian cricket began to rise, until at the time of writing (April 1898) it stands as high as it ever did. Before discussing this eleven it will be well briefly to review the result of five remarkable test matches played in Australia in the winter of 1895 and 1896 between Stoddart’s eleven and the Australians. Stoddart’s eleven was very good, but nobody could say that at that time it was the best that England could have sent. Grace, Jackson, Gunn, Storer, and Abel might with advantage have taken the places of Humphreys, Brockwell, Philipson, Briggs, and Lockwood; but still it was a good team, and it won three out of the five test matches.
Under any circumstances this must always remain a great feat, for each side possess a great advantage when playing in their own country, but on looking carefully into these five matches as a whole, it must be confessed that Stoddart must have been greatly helped by the selection and captaincy of the Colonists. Giffen’s view of his duties of captain was the very erroneous one that it was essential that he should be bowling at one end nearly the whole time. In the first match he bowled 118 overs, while Turner and Jones were only allowed to bowl 117 overs between them. In the second match he magnanimously did not go on in the first innings on a wet wicket, but made up for it by bowling 23 more overs than anyone else in the second innings, and in the last match he bowled while 236 runs were scored off him, and H. Trumble, who was on all wickets the best bowler in Australia, was only selected to play in one of the matches. Stoddart’s side, however, batted finely, and Richardson proved himself at that time to be far the best bowler in the world.
When they came to England in 1896 they brought Giffen, but wisely made Trott captain, and Hill and Darling showed symptoms of developing into the very high position they now hold, and the whole eleven proved themselves a difficult side to get out. Gregory, Darling, Hill, Iredale, Trott, Giffen, and Donnan all scored a thousand runs in the season, and Trumble, Jones, McKibbin, and Giffen each secured over a hundred wickets, and H. Trumble on all wickets was not excelled by any bowler in the two countries. The eleven played a safe game; there was no McDonnell or Lyons in the side, but they took a lot of getting out, though, as might be supposed in the case of a side where there was no hitter, they were weak on soft wickets.
Such was the situation when the last disastrous visit of Stoddart’s eleven took place in 1897 and 1898, and though the result of this tour is very recent history, it is so important and raises such misgivings for the future that it is well to consider it at some length.
In the first place no eleven has ever left England with so much of their countrymen’s confidence as this eleven of Stoddart’s. A great many thought that it was absolutely the best selection that could have been made. It is easy to be wise after the event, but even now it is not at all certain that the bowling could be improved, and this was the notorious weak spot of the eleven. In another part of this work is given a possible first eleven of England, but this selection is given, as far as the bowlers are concerned, with no great confidence, and the truth must sadly be confessed that unless we mend our bowling ways we shall very likely be defeated in our own country by the Australians in 1899. Up to the end of the first test match Stoddart’s eleven had a blaze of triumph in spite of the abnormal heat which knocked up more than one of our eleven. Stoddart had no doubt the worst of the luck in losing the toss three times in the first four test matches, but, unluckily, what many of us dreaded occurred in the last match—he won the toss and lost the match. MacLaren and Ranjitsinhji batted grandly, Storer, Hayward, and Druce passably, but the rest proved more or less a failure, while on Australian wickets against weak English bowling the batting of Darling and Hill was superb, and that of C. McLeod, Gregory, Iredale, Trumble, and Trott very good. But our team as a whole were not strong enough in batting to make up for our bowling weakness, and in a word the Australians thoroughly outbowled us.