Cricket's Greatest Rivalry by Author

Author:Author
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

Oh, for Peate’s Sake!

The one-off Test was assigned three days, beginning on Monday 28 August. The Morning Post declared it ‘lamentable’ that there was only one match organised between Australia and the full strength of England and ‘at a late period in the season when the weather is uncertain and the light so bad that play cannot be prolonged after six o’clock’. Administrators never can get it quite right, can they?

The Australians stayed in the Tavistock Hotel in Covent Garden, which at the time was a poor area regarded as ‘noisy and smelly’. It was a large place with 200 rooms where the team stayed regularly, not necessarily because it was a former bordello with a woman in every room. The players were transported to the ground at 10.30 by horse-drawn carriage.

There had been a lot of rain in the run-up to the match, and of course there were no covers or super-soppers in those days: the pitch was left open to the elements. A drawing of the event suggests it was indistinguishable from the outfield. England, with their deep batting strength and lots of players in form, were favourites to beat ‘the Colonialists’.

Some 20,000 spectators crammed into the ground, paying a total of £1000. The captains – England’s Hornby and Australia’s Murdoch – tossed up, in the pavilion, at 12 o’clock. The Australian won, but there was no time allotted for the captains’ interviews, for Geoff Boycott to stick his key in the pitch (he would probably have lost it if he had) or the five pre-match commercial breaks. Ten minutes later the England team emerged, the six amateurs first, followed by the professionals, and then the Australian opening pair of Charles Bannerman and Hugh Massie.

Not long afterwards Massie was walking back, bowled by a yorker from Ulyett. In fact Ulyett might very well have invented the delivery and given rise to its name, since he was from Yorkshire and ‘to put Yorkshire on someone’ meant, in 19th-century parlance, to hoodwink or deceive them. The damp in the well-used pitch was making the ball jump and 14 successive maiden overs – bowled by the spinners Barlow and Peate – followed as Bannerman and Murdoch literally dug in. But on the hour Murdoch played on to Peate, and Bonner, having nearly been clean bowled first ball, was yorked for 1. The score was 22-3. The crowd went wild – well, there was ‘a tumult of applause’ – when Grace dived and caught Bannerman left-handed at point. 26-4. It was like the first morning at Lord’s in the epic 2005 series when the pace quartet Harmison, Flintoff, Hoggard and Jones ran amok. Except that this was death by stealth…

At lunch, taken at 2pm, the Colonials were 48-6. The England spinners had shared five wickets. Soon after 3pm the Australians were all out for 63, their lowest total of the tour. Dick Barlow had taken 5-19 from 31 overs and Ted Peate 4-31. Eighty overs, 52 of them maidens, had been bowled in the two and a quarter hours’ play.

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