The strangers who came home : the first Australian cricket tour of England / John Lazenby.
Publication details: London : John Wisden & Co., an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.Description: xi, 292 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some colour), portraits, facsimiles ; 24 cmISBN:- 9781408844663 (paperback)
- 9781408842874 (hardback)
- 1408842874 (hardback)
- 796.35865 23
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item reserves | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Melbourne Athenaeum Library | Non-Fiction | 796.358 LAZ | Available | 058853 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
The Ashes cricket series, played out between England and Australia, is the oldest - and undoubtedly the most keenly-contested - rivalry in international sport. And yet the majority of the first representative Australian cricket team to tour England in 1878 in fact regarded themselves as Englishmen. In May of that year the SS City of Berlin docked at Liverpool, and the Australians stepped onto English ground to begin the inaugural first-class cricket tour of England by a representative overseas team. As they made their way south towards Lord's to play MCC in the second match of the tour, the intrepid tourists - or 'the strangers' as they were referred to in the press - encountered arrogance and ignorance, cheating umpires and miserable weather. But by defeating a powerful MCC side which included W.G. Grace himself in a single afternoon's play, they turned English cricket on its head. The Lord's crowd, having begun by openly laughing at the tourists, were soon wildly celebrating a victory that has been described as 'arguably the most momentous six hours in cricket history' and claiming the Australians as their own.