Tourists arrived on these shores in 1868, the English media were less than welcoming. The Times described the tourists as “the conquered natives of a convict colony” and a “travestie upon cricketing at Lord’s”. The Daily Telegraph expressed surprise that, “Although several of them are native bushmen, and all are as black as night, these Indian fellows are to all intents and purposes, clothed and in their right minds.” Yet the tour was to win hearts and minds both sides of the world and at Arundel on Tuesday the men’s Aboriginal XI played the MCC in the opening match of their 150-year celebratory tour.
The 1868 team arrived at Gravesend on 13 May, a decade before the first Australia XI, after a three-month journey across the oceans. They were to play 47 matches between May and October - a gruesome schedule for 13 men who until five years previously had never played or watched cricket.The tour was conceived, coached and captained by ex-pat Englishman and former first-class cricketer Charles Lawrence, who, alongside the other investors in the tour, had an eye for a profit.
Together with their exhausting itinerary of matches, the team would perform traditional Indigenous sports at close of play. One player, Jungunjinanuke, also known as Dick-a-Dick, became something of a star for his prowess at deflecting cricket balls hurled at him, by volunteers, with just a shield and club, to roars of disapproval from some members of the crowd who didn’t like to see a black man showing up the inadequacies of the white man. He would become the only player to make a profit from the trip.
The tour was widely considered a success, with the team winning 14 games, losing 14 and drawing 19, despite the alien conditions and their inexperience. The star performer was all-rounder Unaarrimin, also known as Johnny Mullagh, who scored 1,698 runs, bowled an incredible 1,877 overs and took 245 wickets at 10 a piece. “ I have never bowled to a better batsman,” said English fast bowler George Tarrant.
After an end-of-tour reception at Surrey the team sailed home, but that was pretty much the end of their high-profile cricketing careers. Mullagh played professionally for a year with Melbourne Cricket Club before returned to the western Wimmera, and Victoria called him up for one game. Increasingly “protection boards” rounded up Indigenous people into reserves – and it became illegal for any to leave without government approval.The 2018 touring team is made up of 13 men, who will each wear a shirt bearing the name of one of the original players; and 13 women, themselves pioneers as the first female Indigenous team to tour the UK. They will play against a selection of the same teams, at the same venues, as in 1868.
On Friday both teams will travel to Hove to play Sussex, 150 years to the day since they last played them, for back-to-back T20 games. Jason Gillespie, currently coaching Sussex, is still the only Indigenous man to play Test cricket for Australia (and, had he not taken the Sussex job, was potentially coming on the tour as the assistant bowling coach.)“As an Aboriginal man, I’m absolutely pumped to be here at the same time as them,” he says. “I can’t wait to welcome them to Hove, where we’ll play our best available squad.
“I think it’s fair to say that there has been a real push to help Aboriginal cricket in the last few years which was long overdue, and Cricket Australia have acknowledged that they could have done more. But I 100% applaud the work they’ve been doing recently, it’s brilliant.”Gillespie’s Aboriginal heritage comes through his father’s side, with his great grandfather a member of the Kamilaroi tribe in northern New South Wales. It is in communities like these that cricket has struggled to make an impression.