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
Part 4
The Second Test
When the teams met again at the MCG on Saturday, 31 Mar 1877 for the 2nd Test, New South Welshmen Spofforth (replacing Ned Gregory) and Billy Murdoch (replacing Tom Horan) were in the home squad as was the Victorian Tom Kelly (replacing Bransby Cooper).The Englishmen, with their limited choice, fielded the same team. The umpires for the match were former Victorian medium-paced bowler Sam Cosstick and Richard Terry who had also officiated in the 1st Test match.
Gregory again won the toss and opted to bat first. While the wicket itself had not been affected to any alarming extent, The Argus (Melbourne) of 16 Apr 1877 noted that: “the ground (was) somewhat dead from the effects of rain which fell the day before.” Charles Bannerman, the hero of the 1st Test, and now somewhat recovered from his finger injury, opened the batting again along with Nat Thomson. Alas, there was no magic innings from Bannerman this time, and the innings limped along to 122 all out in just over 3 ½ hours’ time, the total being boosted by 14 extras. Midwinter top scored for the home team with 31 runs. Allen Hill (4/27) was the most successful bowler for the Englishmen, with Lillywhite and Ulyett chipping in with 2 wickets each.
Although they suffered two early reverses, losing their first two wickets with only 4 runs on the board, the English innings picked up momentum from the second day, Easter Monday, as “by that time the sun had brought the turf into as lively a state as batsmen could wish (for).” The innings ended at a substantial 261 all out in just over 4 hours. In the opinion of the correspondent of The Argus, “Too much preference was shown by the captain of the Australian team for his comrade, Spofforth, who was not in form, and only helped the batsmen to set.”
There were 4 meaningful contributions from the middle order: Greenwood (49), Ulyett (52, the only individual fifty), Emmett (48), and Hill (run out for 49). Between them, Tom Kendall (4/82) and Fred Spofforth (3/67) did most of the damage for the home team, with Midwinter and Hodges picking up 1 wicket each.
When Australia began their 2nd innings, they did so under a considerable handicap of 139 runs. This time, skipper Dave Gregory himself chose to accompany Nat Thomson to the crease to open the batting. They put up a fighting partnership of 88 runs for the 1st wicket in just under 2 hours. When Gregory (43) was dismissed, Thomson (41) and Bannerman (30) followed up with a 24-run 2nd wicket stand. Bannerman was dismissed by Ulyett, the local press feeling that “Ever since the accident in question (the finger injury caused by Ulyett in the 1st Test) Bannerman has shown timidity when brought face to face with Ulyett.”
Midwinter’s hand was worth 12 runs. In the entire innings, only 2 men failed to get into double figures, Billy Murdoch (8), and John Hodges (0*). ‘Keeper Blackham contributed a vigorous 26 from # 10 to bring the total up to 259 all out in about 15 minutes short of 5 hours. Lillywhite (4/70) and elderly statesman Southerton (4/46) were the main wicket takers, with Hill and Ulyett capturing 1 wicket each. The inexplicable riddle of this 2nd Test was the unproductive bowling of the great Nottinghamshire bowler, Alfred Shaw, who could not capture a single wicket in the match despite bowling 74 overs in the match.
After the Australian 2nd innings ended on the fourth day of the match, Wednesday, 4 Apr 1877, the winning target for England was 121 runs. It was an inauspicious start for England, with the scorecard reading 2/1, 8/2, and 9/3, as they lost Jupp (1), Selby (2), and Charlwood (0) in rapid succession. A 4th wicket partnership of 45 runs between Greenwood (22) and Ulyett (63, the only individual fifty of the innings) calmed the nerves of the visitors. Subsequent stands of 22 runs for the 5th wicket, 36 runs for the 6th wicket, and an unbeaten 10 runs for the 7th wicket took the visitors home to win the contest by 4 wickets, thus squaring the rubber 1-1, and leaving honours even in the epochal series.
This Test was to mark the end of the careers of Australians Hodges, Kendall and Thomson. The English contingent would be losing the services of Greenwood, Hill, Jupp, Charlwood, skipper Lillywhite, Southerton, and Armitage from their future Test line-ups. A drawn second-class fixture against South Australia that ended on 17 Apr/1877 was to wind up the tour for the Englishmen. In a tour involving 23 games altogether in all categories of cricket, the Englishmen emerged victorious on 11 occasions (including the second Test of all), were on the losing side in 4 games (including the inaugural Test match), and drew the remaining 8 games, a fair outcome for an English professional team consisting of some of the premier cricketers of the times.
Departure
A formal dinner was held at the Globe Hotel of Adelaide on 17 Apr 1877 to bid adieu to the visitors. Local tour organiser John Conway was presented with a locket by skipper James Lillywhite as a token of esteem on behalf of the English team. On Thursday, 19 Apr 1877, the visitors left Adelaide on the steamship Bangalore, reaching London on 2 Jun 1877, bringing to a close the story of a remarkable sequence of events of great historical importance for archivists and statisticians.
There is a popular notion that William Evans Midwinter was on board the Bangalore along with the departing English players as the vessel made her way out of Adelaide harbour in April 1877. Circumstances would combine to negate this view. The last game played by the tourists had been against XXII of South Australia at Adelaide from 14 to 17 Apr 1877, a game in which Midwinter would have had absolutely no reason to participate, hence, his presence in the South Australian city at that time would seem to be improbable. Again, being a Melbourne man embarking on a longish voyage with the intention of spending a fair amount of time in the Home Country, it would seem to be more logical for ‘Mid” to begin the outward journey from his familiar Melbourne environs.
On the other hand, Nick Harris, in his article entitled Tomorrow marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the only man to play in the Ashes for both England and Australia. Happy birthday, Billy Midwinter, written for Independent of 18 Jun 2001, mentions Billy Midwinter being on board the ss Durham bound for London, and departing on 21 Apr 1877 from Melbourne. This seems to be far more logical.
The Historic Shipping website (http://www.historic-shipping.co.uk/) shows the historical shipping records of the ss Durham, constructed by Money Wigram & Sons at Blackwall, and launched on 16 May/1874, shows the following entry: “21st April 1877. Sailed for London from Melbourne.”
The above statement is corroborated in the Shipping Intelligence column of The Argus (Melbourne) of 23 Apr 1877, which states that the ss Durham had, in fact, sailed for London from Melbourne on Saturday, 21 Apr 1877. While the manifest of the departing vessel is shown to have contained several interesting items of merchandise, including opium, tobacco, cigars, preserved meats, fruits, and cordials, and the like, there is, unfortunately, no list of passengers embarking on the voyage. Nick Harris mentions one "W Midwinter, male, 25 years, cricketer, English" among the passengers on board the vessel.
Quoting The Ballarat Star (VIC) of 23 Apr/1877, the Vandemonian Royalty website tells the story:
“Melbourne, 21st April.
That favourite passenger ship the Durham left Sandridge pier this afternoon for England, and as is usual at this season of the year, when an arrival at the antipodes in the summer months is preferred, the number of passengers was large, and necessarily there was a large attendance of friends as well as spectators. Amongst those who have taken their departure are Mr Mitchell, solicitor, of Ballarat; Mr F. Everingham, grain and produce dealer, Ballarat; Mr Greig, lately connected with the firm of Greig and Murray, auctioneers, Melbourne; and Midwinter, the well-known cricketer. The latter, I understand, is only gone on a "flying" visit, but with cricketing objects in view.”
The ss Durham – painted by William Daniel Penny
It seems that the voyage had been enlivened shortly after departure from Melbourne by a sense of general discontent on several counts, with a group of second-class passengers giving vent to their feelings by way of a strong letter of protest to the captain of the vessel (Captain Frederick Anderson), with copies to the local newspapers and to the Management mandarins of the shipping company upon the berthing of the vessel at Gravesend on 23 June/1877. There were detailed complaints about the quality of the meat and vegetables served, about the cooking, the crockery, the cleanliness, the sanitation aspect of the journey, the napery used on the tables, in short, about everything that could be the slightest irritant on a 2-month voyage. ‘Mid’ would probably have been a relieved man to be able to step ashore in England.
Diversion on Gloucestershire
At this point of the narrative, let us turn our collective attention away from Midwinter as he undertakes the 2-month passage on the high seas, and take cognisance of Gloucestershire, a county in the south-west of England, known for the excellence of their cricket. History records the fact that the Gloucestershire County Cricket Club was founded in 1870, one of the founding fathers being Dr Henry Mills Grace, a right-hand batsman and left-arm bowler, who among his other accomplishments, happened to have fathered the legend, Dr WG Grace and his brotherhood of cricketers.
Wisden on Grace: An Anthology, edited by Jonathan Rice, makes the following significant comments with respect to Gloucestershire cricket in the late 1870s:
“It was also in 1877 that WG’s team management style created a radical change within the Gloucestershire ranks. Hitherto, the genuine Gloucestershire team has been wholly composed of amateurs, but in 1877 they played a professional in W Midwinter from Australia, but who is stated to be Gloucestershire born…
“Midwinter, who had already appeared in Test cricket for Australia against England, was indeed Gloucestershire born, and it was WG who persuaded him to come to England to play for Gloucestershire. His pay as a professional may well still have been less than WG’s, as an amateur. Billy Midwinter went on to play over 50 matches for Gloucestershire over the next six seasons.”
As a footnote of cricket history, it may be mentioned here that in the process of honouring the request of WG Grace to join the ranks of Gloucestershire, Billy Midwinter became the first ever overseas player to be employed as a professional by any English county cricket club, thus setting a trend that persists to this day.
It may be mentioned here that the Gloucestershire CCC did not have any dedicated cricket ground of their own when the club was formed in 1870. In his book Amazing Grace: The Man Who Was W. G., author Richard Tomlinson says: “… W.G. could do nothing about Gloucestershire’s lack of money. The club had no home ground and its income from ticket sales was further reduced by the rent it paid Clifton College and Cheltenham College to use their playing fields during the schools’ summer holidays. It was poverty, rather than snobbery, that caused Gloucestershire to continue to put out predominantly amateur sides, because the club could only afford to hire one or two professionals.” Indeed, the early Gloucestershire line-ups would often have in their ranks several young Cambridge and Oxford graduates who used to play their cricket as amateurs.
The Bristol County Cricket Ground, has an interesting history and has been through several avatars over the years. Situated in the district of Ashley Down in the north of Bristol, the ground was initially known as the Nevil Road Ground when it had been bought for the Gloucestershire County Cricket Club by Dr WG Grace himself in 1889. Since then, it has been known as Fry’s Ground, the Phoenix County Ground, and The Royal & Sun Alliance County Ground. It is now the acknowledged home ground of the Gloucestershire County Cricket Club.
Before taking up the career of Midwinter as a professional cricketer in England, a role he was to play over 6 seasons for Gloucestershire, it may appropriate at this point to examine the issue of the professional cricketer, whose livelihood depended on his cricketing skills, as opposed to the amateur cricketer, who supposedly deigned to indulge in the game of cricket solely for the aesthetic pleasure of the game. It was almost as if there existed a well-established caste system in English cricket at the time, a most regrettable social divide in the quintessentially British summer game. The amateur cricketer of the Victorian and Edwardian eras was most often, and usually by choice, a batsman, and the heavy work of bowling out the opposition was usually left to the professionals.
In his book Amateurs and Professionals in Victorian County Cricket, author Keith AP Sandiford cites a very apposite quotation from The Athletic News of 1879: “Both cricketers and the public have become tired of the abuse of terms which confers upon one man the title of gentleman and upon the other that of professional, when the only difference between them is that the so-called gentleman takes money when he has no right to, and the professional who honestly calls himself such finds himself out bidden in his business by the mercenary amateur, who repudiates the title of professional whilst appropriating all the emoluments connected therewith.”
The Gloucestershire team of 1877
The photograph of the members of the Gloucestershire squad of 1877, posted above, shows the stark contrast, within the team, between the so called “amateur’ and the honest “professional” cricketers of the times. While the amateurs are honoured by their initials and their honorific titles of Esq, Billy Midwinter, reportedly invited over as their professional player by WG Grace himself, is extended no such basic courtesy, a slur on the social structure of the times. The same fate is seen to have befallen the umpire, possibly CK Pullin, a former cricketer himself.