[5] Eventually the team to travel to England was selected on an amateur basis with some prominent professional players being left out.
Whilst negotiating with the MCC, Wardill discovered that the prominent English cricketers Shaw, Shrewsbury and Lillywhite were organising a team of their own, all professionals, to tour Australia.
They claimed that they were the first to propose bringing a team to the colonies for the coming season and offered to refer the question to arbitration."
Arrangements with the Shaw group for their team to visit for 1886–87 season were then entered into by the Melbourne Cricket Club and the Australian associations.
[8] The party comprised 13 players, all of them professionals: Arthur Shrewsbury, Billy Barnes, William Gunn, William Scotton, Wilfred Flowers, Mordecai Sherwin and Alfred Shaw (all Nottinghamshire); Dick Barlow and Johnny Briggs (both Lancashire); George Lohmann and Maurice Read (both Surrey); Billy Bates (Yorkshire); and James Lillywhite (Sussex).