Part 4 of an exquisitely detailed biography of Billy Midwinter by Pradip Dhole. The travelling cricketer played four Test matches for England, sandwiched between eight Tests Australia and holds a unique place in cricket history as the only cricketer to have played for both Australia and England in Test Matches against each other
Part 1
Part2
Part 3
The first ever Test match
There was a frisson of excitement among the discerning spectators around the ground when they realised that it was the visiting team trickling onto the field first, soon followed by the New South Wales pair of Charles Bannerman, sometimes referred to as the ‘pocket Hercules’ because of his relatively diminutive stature, and Nat Thomson, who were to open the batting for the All Australia team. It is on historical record that the portly 35-year old Alfred Shaw of Nottinghamshire and England had delivered the first ball in the annals of Test cricket to striker Charles Bannerman at about 1:05 PM of 15 Mar/1877, and that no runs had resulted from the delivery. The first Test run had followed off the second ball bowled when Bannerman had taken a single from it.
The England team in the 1st Test at the MCG, 15 Mar/1877. Wicketkeeper Ted Pooley (with the pads on) was not part of the playing XI.
Opening the English attack from the other end had been Allen Hill, whose action as a round-arm right-arm fast bowler was described by Wisden as "one of the best of its kind that can be recalled". The first wicket partnership was to realise only 2 runs from 6 balls faced, and was terminated when Thomson was bowled by Hill for a solitary run – the first wicket to fall in Test history. The next man in was the Victorian Tom Horan. Batting as if he was completely in a league of his own, Bannerman reached his 50 with a boundary that took him from 47 to 51, to the accompaniment of generous applause from the stands. This was during his 4th wicket stand of 77 runs with a somewhat subdued Bransby Cooper (15 in 100 minutes).
In their eagerness to curb Bannerman’s scoring, the English camp resorted to frequent changes of bowling, but to no avail. As The Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil (Melbourne) mentioned on Page 7 of their 14 Apr/1877 issue: “To Bannerman all the bowlers proved alike. The change from Hill to Ulyett and Emmett, and from Shaw to Southerton, and then to Lillywhite, made no difference to him. The runs came freely, and the score rose from 50 to 100…” When the 4th wicket fell at the total of 118 with the dismissal of Cooper, Bannerman was batting on 86 and was dominating the bowling to an almost unbelievable extent.
During his 5th wicket partnership of 24 runs with Midwinter (6), Bannerman had added only 1 run to his 86 when, with a sudden flurry of 3 consecutive boundaries, he reached the tantalizing figure of 99, leaving the crowd all agog with excitement at the prospect for his reaching the coveted three-figure mark. It was ultimately a modest single that took him there, and he achieved cricketing immortality by becoming the first batsman in history to register a Test century, an honour that nobody would ever take away from him, and to add to the glory was the fact that he, Charles Bannerman, also became the first man in history to score a century on his debut Test, compiling the century in his first Test innings.
The script may have been radically different, however, had it not been for a celebrated piece of mis-fielding by Yorkshireman Tom Armitage. It seems that early in his innings, Bannerman had steered a ball from Alfred Shaw, “the Emperor of Bowlers”, towards Armitage at a fairly comfortable catching height, but the fielder had not been able to hold on to the offering. As mentioned in the book Talks with Old English Cricketers, compiled by “Old Ebor” (AW Pullin), a rueful Alfred Shaw was to later remark “(he) should have been out to one of my slow ones, but he was missed by Armitage.”
Wickets continued to go down around Bannerman, as follows: 1/2, 2/40, 3/41, 4/118, 5/142, and 6/143. At the fall of the 6th wicket, that of Ned Gregory for a duck, Bannerman was there batting on 106. Australia ended the day at 166/6, scored in 115 overs, and Bannerman’s share of the total was 126*, as dominating an innings as can be imagined. Keeping him company was wicketkeeper Jack Blackham on 3*.
The same brisk rate of scoring continued when play resumed on the second day in the presence of about 3,500 spectators, with the broad blade of Bannerman again very much in evidence. Blackham (17) was dismissed at the total of 197, and Bannerman was joined at the wicket by Tom Garrett. Together, they took the total to 232/7 before the teams adjourned for lunch, Bannerman’s contribution at this point of the match being an authoritative 159*, scored in just over 4 ½ hours. It was perhaps about half an hour after the luncheon interval that there was a sudden transformation in the innings.
A sharp, lifting delivery from George Ulyett crushed the second finger of Bannerman’s right hand against the bat handle, causing the finger to split. Having scored a valiant 165* up to this point, Charles Bannerman was forced to retire hurt in the 167th over, after about 10 minutes following the injury. The innings folded up soon after that for 245, with Bannerman being marked “retired hurt.” The chronicler is indebted to the masterful analysis of the iconic innings of 165* of Bannerman by Charles Davis for many of the details mentioned above.
With a little modification of what was reported by the contemporary media columns, and following the Davis analysis referred to above, Bannerman’s sequence of his 78 scoring shots seems to have been something like this: 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 1, 4 (reaching 51* with this boundary off the bowling of Ulyett, about 130 minutes into the innings), 3, 4, 4, 4, 2, 4, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 1, 1, 4, 4, 4, 1 (completing his century with this single off the bowling of Southerton, after batting for 160 minutes), 1, 4, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 4, 1, 4, 1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 1, 4 (reaching 153*, scored in 265 minutes, and reaching the landmark with a boundary off the bowling of Ulyett), 2, 4, 2, 4, 1, retired hurt on 165*. As can be seen, the innings was replete with 18 boundary hits, and, as mentioned in the database of Charles Davis, was scored in 295 minutes, from approximately 330 balls faced. Incredibly, Bannerman’s 165* was almost 67.35% of the team total, the oldest batting record in the history of Test cricket till date.
The Roar website, featuring an article entitled The Very First Test Match Revisited written by Paul Nicholls, provides some interesting information concerning an incident that followed soon. The England 1st innings began unobtrusively enough with Henry Jupp and ‘keeper John Selby walking out to a smattering of polite handclapping from the crowd. John Hodges, the skipper’s choice in the playing XI, prepared to bowl the first ball on behalf of Australia in Test history. Jupp collected a run off the bat and an overthrow from the first ball of the innings. Jupp then played the 4th and last ball of the same over straight down the ground for 2 more runs.
The Australians, however, seemed to be excited about something as they gathered around the stumps, pointing to a bail on the ground, and appealing repeatedly to the umpire for a hit wicket decision. Jupp had apparently trod on his stumps while making the stroke! The bowling end umpire, Richard Terry, had not noticed it and the square-leg umpire, Curtis Reid, joined Terry in a huddle of confused conversation. Meanwhile, there were some excited, and not very friendly exchanges between a grinning Jupp and the assembled Australians, perhaps the first sledge in history was being offered gratis by the home team members. The issue hung in the balance for a while before the umpires denied having seen Jupp disturbing his wicket while making the stroke. A decision of ‘Not Out’ was made in favour of Jupp to the dismay of the incredulous Australians, and the first controversy had been registered in the annals of Test cricket.
At the end of the second day, the Englishmen went in with a total of 109 at the fall of the 4th wicket, that of Andrew Greenwood (1). Earlier, Henry Charlwood, batting at # 3, had scored a creditable 36, sharing a 2nd wicket partnership of 56 valuable runs with opener Henry Jupp, who remained undefeated on 54 runs at stumps. The interesting battle was resumed on the 3rd day, a Saturday.
English wickets fell in a steady stream on the 3rd morning and it was only the 51 runs added by the last 2 wickets that really spared the blushes for the visitors. Even so, the innings ended at 196 all out in the 137th over, conceding a deficit of 49 runs. Opener Jupp played a responsible hand of 63 runs, battling for his team for upwards of 3 hours, and was the 7th man dismissed, at the team total of 145. Two other individual performances are worth mentioning in the innings: Charlwood’s 36 from # 3, and Hill’s 35* from # 9. For the home team, Billy Midwinter shone with the ball, his medium-paced offerings fetching him figures of 5/78, although he was introduced rather late into the attack. This was the first 5-wicket haul in Test history, and the Australians had laid down another indelible marker in cricket lore.
The 3rd day crowd count was reported to be about 10,000. In spite of his injury, Bannerman insisted on opening the batting again in the 2nd innings with his Sydney compatriot Nat Thomson, not a very wise decision, as later events proved. Bannerman’s 2nd innings effort consisted of a single boundary. At the end of the 3rd day, Australia went in at 83/9 in 62 overs, with the last wicket stand already worth 8 runs.
After the resumption of the 4th day’s play at about 12:20 PM, the not out batsmen, Kendall (17*) and Hodges (8) stretched out the innings to the tune of 21 more runs to take the Australian 2nd innings total to 104 all out on the 4th day of the match. Alfred Shaw (5/38) became the second player, and the first Englishman, to achieve a 5-wicket haul in Test cricket, adding to his 3/51 from the 1st innings. Ulyett, wicketless in the 1st innings, picked up 3/39 in the 2nd knock.
The winning target for the Englishmen in the last innings of the match was thus 154 runs as they began their 2nd innings on Monday, 19 Mar 1877, the 4th day of the match, after a day of repose on the Sabbath day. The Argus (Melbourne) of 20 Mar 1877, perhaps echoing the general sentiment, said: “Very few professed judges of the game had any doubt at the commencement of play yesterday that the English eleven would win the match.” Hill and Greenwood emerged from the pavilion to launch the English innings. Hill was dismissed without scoring, Greenwood was caught in the covers by Midwinter for 5, with Kendall picking up the first 2 wickets with the total reading 7.
Jupp, the 1st innings batting hero for the Englishmen, was dismissed lbw to Midwinter for a paltry 4 runs. When Charlwood (13) was bowled by Kendall, the English total read 22/4, and there would have been some trepidation in the visiting camp. Wicketkeeper Selby and Ulyett produced a fightback of sorts, adding 40 valuable runs for the 5th wicket, the highest of the innings. The Argus said: “For a short time matters stood still in a state of uncertainty, like ‘the swansdown feather that stands upon the swell at the full of tide and neither way inclines’.”
The luncheon interval was taken with England on 59/4, and though the interval had been scheduled for half an hour, it was more like 50 minutes before the players returned, the ambient heat of the afternoon being a plausible reason for the delay. Kendall broke the partnership shortly after resumption of play by bowling Ulyett (24) to leave the visitors 62/5. The experienced Alfred Shaw made his sombre way to the wicket to join Selby, who was batting on 14 at this time. It was soon 68/6 when Shaw (2) was stumped by Blackham off Kendall. In a moment of sheer inspiration, Dave Gregory then called upon the young 22-year old John Hodges, the left-arm round-arm fast-medium bowler from the Richmond Club, to try his hand with the ball. The youngster, Hodges, then repaid his skipper’s faith by having Selby (38, the top score of the innings) caught at long on by Horan to make it 92/7. The writing was now clearly on the wall for Lillywhite’s team of experienced professional cricketers.
The Englishmen could add only 16 more runs to their total for the loss of the remaining 3 wickets, and were bowled out for 108 in the 67th over, conceding victory to the Australians by 45 runs in this, the very first Test match of all. Tom Kendall had outstanding figures of 7/55, the third 5-wicket haul in history, and the best figures till then, and won the silver cup awarded by The Australasian, a local newspaper, for the best bowling effort of the match. Earlier, a collection held among the spectators in honour of Charles Bannerman after his splendid century had brought the champion batsman about £83. The four days of the contest attracted about 20,500 spectator.
In their book The Penguin History of Australian Cricket, Chris Harte and Bernard Whimpress quote a comment from The Australasian on the significance of the victory: “The victory of the Australian Eleven over the English cricketers is no ordinary triumph. For the first time a team representing the cricketing prowess of England has been beaten on equal terms out of that country. The event marks the great improvement which has taken place in Australian cricket: and shows, also, that in bone as muscle, activity, athletic vigour, and success in field sports, the Englishmen born in Australia do not fall short of the Englishmen born in Surrey or Yorkshire.”
Surprisingly, and particularly in view of the historical significance of the game, “Wisden ignored altogether what is today regarded as the very first Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 1877, disposing of the entire tour in a few perfunctory lines.” In the book Endless Summer, Gideon Haigh, the editor of the volume, sheds some light on this amazing lapse on the part of the Almanack. As Haigh remarks, “Australian cricket and cricketers infiltrated those early almanacks stealthily.”
One important contributory reason may have been the prohibitively expensive cost of receiving news items via the undersea telegraphic cable connecting Australia and Great Britain from 1872 onwards. As a result, the compilers of the early issues of Wisden had, perforce, to be dependent on premier Australian newspapers like The Australasian, The Leader, The Sportsman, and such others as they arrived by overseas passage from the antipodean colonies. As Haigh explains, there was also an element of commercial rivalry involved in the paucity of news featured in Wisden in connection with the 4th English tour of Australia under the stewardship of James Lillywhite Jnr.
By this time, relationships between the compilers of the Wisden set up were in a state of fierce competitiveness with Lillywhite and his journal, John Lillywhite’s Cricketers’ Companion, each camp claiming exclusive authenticity of the news purveyed. In the words of Gideon Haig: “The contrast between the 1878 editions of the two annuals was then most marked: while James Lillywhite Jnr reported exclusively on the tour and the Test in Lillywhite, Wisden studiously looked the other way.” It was only after the conclusion of the Centenary Test of 1977, which, by a strange coincidence, Australia won by the identical margin of 45 runs, did Wisden see fit to comment extensively on the first Test of all.