Tour of Australia 1897-98                   Captain : Andrew Stoddart                

England’s 14th Test tour

(September 1897-April 1898)

Eleventh Test-playing tour of Australia by an English side

   (previous tour 1894-95)

For the second time the Melbourne Club and Sydney Cricket Ground trustees combined to host and sponsor an English team under ‘Drewy’ Stoddart. They also provided the tour management.

The team did not play for a week before the opening day of the First Test match on 13 December owing to the rain leading the ground authorities at Sydney to postpone the start. The English side protested but, with centuries from MacLaren, the stand-in captain, and Ranjitsinhji, they accumulated 551 runs and came out winners of the match by nine wickets. However, Australia regrouped and won the next four Test matches, two of them by an innings.

Stoddart received the news of his mother's death on 8 December. Although he did not return home, he remained depressed for the next month and did not make himself available to play in the first two Test matches.

In the first match of the tour, the team's umpire Jim Phillips had no-balled Ernie Jones for throwing and then did so again in the second Test at Melbourne, making Jones the first man to be no-balled in a Test match.

Ranjitsinhji and MacLaren, with batting averages of around sixty, each scored more than 1000 runs on the tour, the first time this had been achieved in Australia.

All England tours

Previous Test tour

South Africa 1895-96(Lord Hawke’s team)

Next Test tour

South Africa 1898-99(Lord Hawke’s team)

Next tour of  Australia

1901-02(MacLaren’s team)

Members of the Test tour party (13)

Opening batsmen:   Archie MacLaren, Jack Mason.

Middle-order batsmen Andrew Stoddart, Prince Ranjitsinhji, Frank Druce, Ted Wainwright, Tom Hayward

Wicket-keepers: Bill Storer, Jack Board

All-rounders:  George Hirst

Slow bowlers:Johnny Briggs,

Fast bowlers:  Jack Hearne, Tom Richardson.

County representation:

Dy – Derbyshire (1)

Gs -  Gloucestershire (1)

Kt  -  Kent (1)

La  -  Lancashire (2)

Mx  -  Middlesex (2)

Sy  -  Surrey (2)

Sx - Sussex (1)

Yo  -  Yorkshire (2)

Cam - Cambridge University (1)

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

(13 December 1897) :

    28 yrs 5 months

Test Appearances made before the tour

Briggs 27,  Stoddart 14,  Richardson 9,  MacLaren 7,  Hayward 5,  Hearne 4,  Ranjitsinhji 2,  Wainwright 1,  Board 0,  Druce 0,  Hirst 0,  Mason 0,  Storer 0.

Tour Officials

Selectors

Stoddart made all the arrangements, including inviting the players he wanted.

Selection

Invitations were sent out in August.

Unavailable:  Wicket-keeper Dick Lilley declined the tour because of his business as a licensee and Storer replaced him.

Captain E.G.Wynyard withdrew because of his military duties. Also unavailable were Bobby Abel,  Dick Attewell,  and Stanley Jackson

Johnny Briggs made his sixth and final tour of Australia.

Time between selection and departure from England

   days

 ( ?  - 17 September)

Travel

Tilbury     T     Adelaide

                ‘Ormuz’

First, Mr MacLaren left Plymouth on Saturday 4 September on the 'Oruba'. The remainder of the team took a train from St Pancras Station, London, to Tilbury Docks, Essex, and sailed on the 'Ormuz' on 17 September. After calling at Plymouth and Gibraltar, the ship picked up Ranjitsinhji at Naples.

The 'Ormuz'called at Port Said, Colombo and Albany, Western Australia, but there were no matches at any of these ports of call because the sponsors would not finance them.  The ship docked at Largs Bay, South Australia, on 24 October, and the team then went by train to Adelaide.  MacLaren arrived from Melbourne two days later.

The Australian state governments waived their deterrent restrictionss on ‘alien’ (coloured) immigrants, such was Prince Ranjitsinhji's popularity.

Time spent in Australia

    151  days

(24 October - 24 March) 

Reinforcements

Sir Arthur Priestley, 32, who was travelling with the team, played in three matches and was a substitute fielder against Ballarat when Ranji was unwell with asthma and inflamed tonsils.

Fixtures/Results

Owing to continuous rain, the New England match could not be completed on its second day (4 Dec) and would be continued on Monday 6 Dec. By then some of the Armidale players had already returned home so a new game was started. New England reached 34- 4 before heavy rain ended this match, too.

† not first-class

Time spent in Australia before First Test:

  50 days

(24 October - 13 December)

Test appearances on tour

(v Australia 1897-98)

5 -   Briggs,  Druce,  Hayward,  Hearne,  MacLaren,  Mason,  Ranjitsinhji,  Richardson,  Storer.

4 -   Hirst,  Wainwright.

2 -   Stoddart.

0 -   Board.

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 South Africa 1895-96 (3 Tests)

 - won 3-0

in Australia 1894-95 (5 Tests)

 - won 3-2

in South Africa 1891-92 (1 Test)

 - won 1-0

in Australia 1891-92 (3 Tests)

 - lost 1-2

in South Africa 1888-89 (4 Tests)

 - won 2-0

in Australia 1887-88 (1 Test)

 - won 1-0

Highlights

•  Archie MacLaren, standing in as captain, scored 109 in the first Test match at Sydney but was overshadowed by Ranji’s famous innings of 175. This was the highest score for England in a Test until Foster’s 287 six years later.

•  Jack Hearne took nine wickets in the opening Test match at Sydney (5-42 and 4-99)

•  Archie MacLaren scored another century (124) in the third Test at Adelaide described in his 1981 biography as “five hours of unrelenting concentration and uncharacteristic defence” (Michael Down)

•  As the English bowling wilted against 20 year-old Clem Hill’s 188 at Melbourne, Jack Hearne took 6 for 98.

•  In the return match with NSW at Sydney a record match aggregate of 1739 runs was scored.

•  In the final Test at Sydney Tom Richardson took ten wickets, with 8-94 and 2-110.

Tour Summary

Return to England

Adelaide T    Marseilles/Tilbury

                ‘Ormuz’

The team took the train from Melbourne to Adelaide for the final tour match, and caught the 'Ormuz' on Thursday 24 March from Largs Bay, South Australia.

The ship sailed via Colombo (where Ranji disembarked), Port Said, Suez and Marseilles, where the professional players left the ship.  They travelled back to England overland while the remainder went on in the 'Ormuz'

At Plymouth Maclaren and Board disembarked, so that only three amateur players (Stoddart, Druce and Mason) were still aboard when the ship finally reached Tilbury on Friday 29 April 1898.

Time away from England

  224 days  

(17 September - 29 April)

Finances

Accounts of the tour

"My Dear Victorious Stod"  by David Frith (Lutterworth Press, 1977)  included chapters on the tour.

“With Stoddart’s team in Australia”  by K S Ranjitsinhji (Constable 1985: reprint of Padwick 4423 with new introduction by Alan Ross)

Postscript

Stoddart’s eleven reunited to play aginst Rest of England in September 1898.

The next tour of Australia did not take place for four years. During the 1899 Australians’ tour the manager Ben Wardill, secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Club, had invited its English counterpart, London’s Marylebone Cricket Club (M.C.C), to send out a touring side in 1900-01 but when this proved impossible, asked for 1901-02 instead. Even then M.C.C. could not raise a side and withdrew from the project so Archie MacLaren took out his own team.