Australian Aboriginal cricket team in England in 1868
An Aboriginal XI was created with the assistance of Tom Wills, the captain of the Victorian cricket team and founder of Australian rules football, who acted as the side's captain-coach in the lead-up to and during an 1866–67 tour of Victoria and New South Wales.
Wills' decision to join and help the team has been something of a puzzle given that, only five years earlier, he had survived the Cullin-la-ringo massacre in Queensland, in which his father and 18 other European colonists were murdered by local Aboriginal people.
"[7] Although they lost to the MCC, the Aboriginal players were commended for their performance, and showed marked improvement on a subsequent tour of country Victoria.
They were looked after by Charles Lawrence at his Manly Hotel, and he organised a number of games, completing a tour of New South Wales before returning to Victoria in May.
He was contracted to be the first professional cricket coach in New South Wales, and he first saw the indigenous team under the instructions of Tom Wills who played a match at the Albert Ground, Sydney.
[9] Having played an exhibition match attended by Prince Alfred at the Albert Ground,[10] the side departed Sydney aboard the Parramatta on 8 February 1868.
"The Daily Telegraph wrote: It is highly interesting and curious, to see mixed in a friendly game on the most historically Saxon part of our island, representatives of two races so far removed from each other as the modern Englishman and the Aboriginal Australian.
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.In total, the Aboriginal team played 47 matches throughout England over a period of six months, winning 14, losing 14 and drawing 19, a good result that surprised many at the time.
The Aboriginal team were narrowly beaten in a cricket-ball-throwing competition by an emerging English all-rounder of star quality, the 20-year-old W. G. Grace, who threw 118 yards.
Mullagh was employed as a professional by the Melbourne Cricket Club and represented Victoria against the touring English team in 1879, top-scoring in the second innings.
[18] On 13 October 1951, former Australia captain Vic Richardson unveiled a memorial to the side in Edenhope, Victoria, where the players had trained prior to the tour.
[19][20] In May 1988, an Aboriginal team captained by John McGuire visited England to mark the Australian Bicentenary, retracing the steps of the 1868 side.
[21][22] Vince Copley of the Ngadjuri people assisted in organising the tour,[23] about which a documentary entitled Dreaming of Lord's was shown the following year on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.
[28] In January 2020, Len Pascoe encouraged singer/songwriter Matt Scullion to write a song about the tour, having been talking about it to Gamilaraay elder and retired cricketer Les Knox.
[29][30] A number of Aboriginal artefacts brought to England by the tour party are preserved in the collection of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter.
