Cricket touring in Australia in those days differed from more modern experiences in several respects. The railways between Adelaide and Melbourne and Melbourne and Queensland had not yet been completed, so that most disturbing little sea journeys, lasting about thirty-six hours, on small and not overclean steamers, had to be undertaken on several occasions. Nothing more calculated to temporarily disarrange the health and form of a travelling cricket eleven could be well imagined, and the railway journeys which have now been substituted must be far preferable, from the player’s point of view.
The cricket grounds in the chief capitals were already very good, but in Adelaide the turf had been too recently laid to have nearly reached the perfection to which it afterwards attained. In Sydney, the species of grass which has been before alluded to has now, we believe, been altered to English grass, then supposed to be quite unsuited to the climate, with the best possible results.
No new players of any prominence appeared among the Australians, unless we make an exception in the case of W. H. Cooper, the Victorian. He had already played in first-class cricket for some years, and had made a considerable reputation by his wonderful leg breaks. The usual penalty attaching to this great power of twist, viz. loss of pitch, always made him a very doubtful quantity, and he was liable to be ruinously expensive in the matter of runs.
The arrival of an Australian eleven in England every second year had now become quite an established custom, and 1884 saw a strong selection of players once more with us. The changes in the personnel proved to be the substitution of Scott, Midwinter, Alexander, and Cooper for Horan, Massie, S. Jones, and Garrett, and there can hardly be a contrary opinion that this change was slightly for the worse. Scott certainly sustained his own part with considerable success, but the displaced four names proved in the long run to be very difficult to replace adequately.
Three matches with England produced the not very satisfactory result of two drawn games and one win for England, a foretaste of the indecisive sequences which have stirred up the attempts at legislative interference in later times. Although unable to win one of the three matches, the Australians had certainly rather the best of the two that were undecided. In the first match, at Manchester, England was only 93 runs on with one wicket to fall, after a first innings of 182; and in the third match, at the Oval, they gave us a very fine display of batting, winning the toss and making 551, the largest total yet recorded in these matches.
YOUTH WITH A CRICKET BAT
(Supposed to have been Painted about 1780).
Murdoch, true to his character of leading batsman, headed the list with 211, Macdonnell 103, and Scott 102, while the English bowling was reduced to such straits that Alfred Lyttelton’s lobs were afforded the chance of a lifetime, and actually captured the last four wickets for 19 runs!