Australian cricket team in England in 1884
The 1884 tour was a private venture by the thirteen players who each invested an agreed sum to provide funding, none of Australia's colonial cricket associations being involved.
The dispute was never evident while Murdoch's team was in England as they completed all their scheduled fixtures, winning eighteen matches and losing seven with seven drawn.
[18] Details of the England players include their ages at the beginning of the 1884 season, their batting and bowling styles, and the county club[notes 2] they represented in 1884: The Fourth Australian team was selected after Christmas 1883 at which time Victoria were playing New South Wales at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in a match which ended on New Year's Eve with a three wicket win by Victoria.
[14] After one final match in Adelaide, which was the last time South Australia needed odds (i.e., extra men) to compete, the tourists left Melbourne on 11 March 1884 aboard the P & O steamer Sutlej and arrived at Plymouth on 29 April.
[40] Murdoch enjoyed a shipboard romance on the return voyage with an heiress called Jemima Watson whom he married at Fitzroy, Victoria in December, only a few weeks after the Mirzapore berthed.
[41] The outward bound voyage had a short stopover at Colombo where the Australians played a drawn game on Galle Face Green against a Ceylon XVIII in a one-day match on 1 April.
[42] The return voyage also stopped off in Colombo and the team played another odds match, again on Galle Face Green and drawn, on 23 October.
[78] Chris Harte commented that the match was also the origin of Old Trafford's "reputation for wet weather", the game being drawn after rain had made the first day unplayable.
[14][79] The match was therefore reduced to two days play and it was reported that the wicket dried much quicker than expected and conditions were never difficult for batting.
[80] This was the inaugural Lord's Test and England won by an innings after a century by A. G. Steel and fine bowling by Ted Peate and George Ulyett.
[81] However, Ulyett is best remembered in this match for taking what Pelham Warner called "one of the historic catches of cricket" when he caught and bowled Bonnor, noted for his powerful hitting.
This had been agreed beforehand by Alexander and Harris to enable the tourists to cover their costs, but the press disapproved and accused the Australians of being mercenary and acting outside the spirit of the game.
Harte commented on the extreme bias of the press as, in all their other games, the Australians received only a share of the gate money, "an arrangement appreciated by the county clubs as the visitors' popularity always boosted takings".
England, as the score mounted, used 11 bowlers: the first time in Test cricket that an entire team including the wicketkeeper was called upon to bowl.
[85] The two main features of England's first innings were Scotton's "stonewalling" and Read's (batting at number ten) "hard and rapid hitting".
[87] The tour began well for the Australians with an innings victory in their opening match at Uckfield against a team chosen by Lord Sheffield which included W. G. Grace, George Ulyett, Billy Barnes, Alfred Shaw and Arthur Shrewsbury.
Although Fred Spofforth, Harry Boyle and Billy Midwinter were all playing, the Australian bowling was performed by George Giffen and Joey Palmer only, and they both took ten wickets in the match.
[48] Centuries by Grace, A. G. Steel and Barnes gave MCC an innings victory at Lord's[49] and Warner described this feat as "remarkable".
[88] The next ten matches prior to the Old Trafford Test were played mainly in the north of England and the Australians did very well in this period, through June and into early July.
[55] In the return match against the Gentlemen at the Oval, the last three English batsmen including Lord Harris were all stumped by Jack Blackham.
[66] Spofforth with 14 wickets and George Bonnor with an innings of 68 in a low-scoring match put the Australians back on track when they easily defeated a strong Players XI at the Oval.
[75] Murdoch, Percy McDonnell and Giffen all scored 1,000 runs for the Australians in the 1884 season while Scott, Bannerman and Bonnor topped 900.
[93] Although there had been a prior agreement on the matter, bad feeling about the proceeds from the Lord's Test lingered and, at the end of their tour, the Fourth Australians faced more recriminations from the British press.
[88] The problems spilled over into the next Australian season when an English team formed by Alfred Shaw, James Lillywhite and Arthur Shrewsbury toured.
Having agreed contracts for matches with the colonial authorities, Lillywhite offered Alexander 30% of the gate receipts from the first two Tests, but Murdoch and the rest of the team insisted on 50%.
