Tour of Australia  1882-83                  Captain :  Hon Ivo Bligh    

England’s fourth Test tour

(September 1878 - March 1879)

Fourth Test-playing tour of Australia by an English side

    (previous tour 1881-82)

In January 1882 Ben Wardill, secretary of the Melbourne Club, invited another English team to Australia after the Hon. Ivo Bligh had suggested a repeat of Lord Harris's successful 1878-79 tour. The Hon Alfred Lyttelton would have led the team but for his duties at the Bar, so Bligh was captain.

On the voyage out to to Australia the team had spent a day sightseeing in Ceylon but, sailing on, their ship collided with another vessel in thick fog, and had to return to Colombo for repairs. This allowed time to play the first-ever tour matches in Ceylon.

The focus of the tour was a rubber of three 'Test' matches, played for "The Ashes" against Murdoch's Australian team that had toured England in 1882 when Australia had won a narrow victory at The Oval over a full-strength England side. According to the mock obituary notice in The Sporting Times, mourning the death of English cricket, it was announced that the body would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. Bligh pledged that he would bring back those ashes. After losing the first match at Melbourne, Bligh's team won the next game handsomely, which generated great interest in the decisive match atSydney. There Bligh's team won by 69 runs and "regained the Ashes".

A fourth match against a more powerful full-strength 'Combined Australia' team, which was lost but discounted at the time as regards winning back the Ashes, was added to the programme during the tour, but a proposed fifth 'Test' match at Adelaide was never played.

The origin of The Ashes urn, which always stays in the museum at Lord's Ground, remains uncertain but Ronald Willis's book, marking the 100th anniversary, put forward that at Christmas the English team played a light-hearted social match at Rupertswood Estate, home of the Melbourne Club president, after which the cover of a ball was burnt and its ashes placed in an urn to be presented to the England captain.  Bligh, later the 8th Earl of Darnley, retained the urn until his death in 1927 when his widow presented it to M.C.C.

All England tours

Previous Test tour

Australia 1881-82

(Alfred Shaw's eleven)

Next Test tour

Australia 1884-85 

(Shaw & Shrewsbury’s team)

Members of the Test tour party (12)

Opening batsmen:  Dick Barlow, Charles Studd.

Middle-order batsmen Charles  Leslie, George Vernon, Ivo Bligh, Walter Read, George Studd,

Wicket-keeper: Sutton Tylecote

All-rounders:  Allan Steel, Willie Bates

Fast bowlers: Fred Morley, William Barnes

County representation:

Kt  -  Kent (2)

La  -  Lancashire (2)

Mx  -  Middlesex (2)

Nt  -  Nottinghamshire (2)

Sy -  Surrey (2)

Yo  - Yorkshire (1)

Cam U - Cambridge University

Ox U - Oxford University

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

(30 December 1882) :

     27 yrs 0 months

Test Appearances made before the tour

Barlow 5,  Bates 4,  Steel 2,  Barnes 2,  Morley 1,  C T Studd 1,  Bligh 0,  Leslie 0,  Read 0,  G B Studd 0,  Tylecote 0,   Vernon 0.

Tour Officials

The Melbourne Club appointed a tour manager, Australian George Alexander who joined the team on arrival, as well as an umpire and scorer.

Selectors

Lord Harris convened a group to advise on the composition of the team, including himself, Hon Alfred Lyttelton, Hon Ivo Bligh and Isaac Walker.

Selection

Unavailable :  W G Grace, Hon Alfred Lyttelton ; at the last moment Messrs A N Hornby and Morton Lucas could not tour.

Not considered:  John Crossland of Lancashire, suspected of throwing by Lord Harris, was not considered

Tour Party Announced  : 20 July 1882 (as published in 'Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game').

Time between selection and departure from England

   56 days

 (20 July - 14 September)

Travel

Gravesend  T   Adelaide

              ‘Peshawur’

The main body of the team left Gravesend on the ship ‘Peshawur’ on 14 September 1882.

Barlow, Bates, Leslie and Vernon crossed the Channel a week later, travelling overland to Italy, and boarded the ‘Poonah'’ at Brindisi. They met up with the ‘Peshawur’ at Suez on 1 October.

The team played a match in Ceylon on 13-14 October. Shortly after leaving port, there was a collision between the 'Peshawur’ and another vessel, the 'Glenroy'.  The ‘Peshawur’ returned to Colombo and could not sail again until 24 October.  

The ship finally docked at Port Adelaide/Glenelg on 10 November, the late arrival causing a three-day match to be cancelled.

Time spent in Australia

    125 days

(10 November -  15 March)

Reinforcements

Fred Morley broke a rib in the collision at sea. As a professional, Morley was expected to participate in all the matches but his ribs and chest were bruised so badly that he struggled to appear in even half of them.

Ivo Bligh's right hand was badly injured in a tug-of-war competition, also while on board ship. He could not play until the match at Newcastle, so that Martin Cobbett, an accompanying English reporter who wrote forThe Sportsman, and manager George Alexander were drafted in for some of the odds matches.

Fixtures/Results

† not first-class

Time spent in Australia before First Test:

   50 days

(10 November - 30 December)

Test appearances on tour

4 -   Barlow,  Barnes,  Bates,  Bligh,  Leslie,  Read,  Steel, C T Studd,  G B Studd,  Tylecote.

3 -   Morley.

1 -   Vernon.

Match appearances

T  Test match

x other match 

∙  played for opposition

W won  L  lost  D drawn  

N no result   A abandoned  

u unknown result

England’s six previous Test tour results:

in Australia 1881-82 (4 Tests)

 - lost 0-2

in Australia 1878-79 (1 Test)

 - lost 0-1

in Australia 1876-77 (2 Tests)

 - drew 1-1

Highlights

•  Willie Bates took 14 wickets, including the hat-trick, and scored a fifty in the 2nd Test match at Melbourne.

•  Dick Barlow's 7 wickets for 40 runs secured victory at Sydney in the 3rd match

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Tour Summary

Return to England

Melbourne  T    London

        ‘Nizam’/’Parramatta’

At Melbourne the touring party broke up, the tourists returning home in three separate groups. The four professionals sailed from Melbourne on the 'Nizam' on 15 March, reaching London on 2 May.

The amateurs remained in Melbourne for a fortnight, C T Studd, Steel, Leslie, Read and Tylecote leaving Hobson’s Bay on the P & O’s 'Parramatta'  on 29 March.   Bligh stayed a little longer and he became engaged to be married before he left Australia on 5 May, arriving home on 25 June 1883.

The RMS Zealandia  sailed from Sydney for San Francisco on 20 May with G B Studd and G F Vernon aboard.

Time away from England

  230 days  

(14 September -   2 May)

Finances

The tour was financed by the Melbourne Club which had taken up Bligh's suggestion to bring a team in the spirit of promoting the game of cricket as much as making a profit.

Accounts of the tour

"St Ivo and The Ashes (A Correct, True and Particular History of Ivo Bligh's Crusade in Australia””   by R D Beeston   (facsimile editions:  published by J W McKenzie 1982, and by Kessinger Legacy Reprints 2010).

"Cricket's Biggest Mystery"   by Ronald Willis  (Lutterworth Press, 1983) 

“Cricket's Burning Passion”  by Scyld Berry and Rupert Peploe   (Methuen 2006).

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