The first Kent v Australia clash

No tourist side is more eagerly anticipated than the Australians and Kent will welcome the Antipodeans for the 34th time in June 2015.

Kent Cricket honorary curator David Robertson begins his review of The Australians in Kent through the years.

Since 1882, Kent has played the Australians 33 times: 31 at Canterbury and a match each at Gravesend and Maidstone.

The early games traditionally entertained great crowds at Canterbury Cricket Week, often as a finale to the season and after the final Test Match.

Kent’s first game against Australia was played in early August 1882 over three days.

Australia’s sides featured 19^th century stars such as Bannerman, Blackham, Garrett and Horan, (who all played in the first ever Test Match) for the visitors.

Local heroes Lord Harris, the three Hearne brothers and Francis Mackinnon, all of whom later represented England.

The Australians arrived undefeated at Canterbury for their first meeting after eight wins over counties including Yorkshire three times.

They had yet to play the only Test Match, scheduled for the Kennington Oval later that month. Eight of the side that appeared at the Oval played against Kent.

It was a pretty formidable side led by Murdoch, the first Australian to score a triple hundred in first-class cricket.

For Kent, whose form up to that point had not been impressive, prospects of a win did not look good.

The hosts had recorded only one victory and had suffered five defeats.

Their one victory, against Sussex at Gravesend’s Bat & Ball ground, featured an opening stand of 208 between Lords Harris and Throwley with the former being dismissed only after reaching a career-high score of 176.

In the two games immediately before the visit of the tourists, they suffered heavy defeats at the hands of Surrey.

The “gloriously fine” Canterbury Week of 1882 marked the first visit of an Australian team to the St Lawrence Ground.

Wisden reported that “4,360 spectators paid at the gates and about 1,000 more were admitted with subscription tickets.” And there were thirty-nine “well filled” tents.

As for the game, it was thought in some circles that the Kent XI was not “representative” in the absence of Ivo Bligh, the Penn brothers and Henry Renny-Tailyour and that as a consequence Kent’s challenge would be weakened.

That, more than 130 years later, seems a harsh criticism given that only two of those four named appeared for the county that season, and then for only one match.

Winning the toss, Murdoch decided to bat. Openers Bannerman and Massie scored more than fifty in the first half-hour.

With the score on 87, Massie was out but that did not reduce the scoring rate. The hundred was reached in an hour but not before the Australian captain had been stumped without scoring.

That started something of a batting collapse with the tourists reduced to 121-5 before the experienced Blackham and 21-year-old Jones staged a recovery.

Both made their best scores of the summer, adding 93 for the seventh wicket.

With medium-pace bowler Boyle adding a valuable undefeated 27, the innings closed on 307 leaving Kent a difficult final session to bat in deteriorating light.

By the close of play, they lost six wickets for 84 runs with both openers, W.H. Patterson and Lord Harris each being dismissed for under 20 runs.

The combination of Thomas Garrett’s fast-medium and George Palmer’s off-breaks did the damage, both men taking three wickets.

Kent’s remaining hope of a challenging score rested with wicket-keeper Edmund Tylecote who was undefeated on 28.

An even bigger crowd than on the opening day, (Wisden records that “the crowd was never so large at Canterbury before on any day of any week”)spectators enjoyed an undefeated 100 by Tylecote ably supported by Cecil Wilson, subsequently the Rt Rev. Bishop of Melanesia, who scored 57.

The two added 125 for the eighth wicket. The last two batsmen did not add to the score and as a consequence Kent’s total of 222 fell just short of the 228 needed to save the follow-on.

It made sense for the successful batting combination of Tylecote and Wilson to open the second innings.

Despite Tylecote going cheaply, at 130-2 there were hopes of a serious challenge to the visitors on the final day but apart from Patterson (59), Wilson, who added another half-century and Lord Harris (24), no-one else reached double figures.

Palmer and Garrett were again the destroyers and between them took 19 wickets in the match. Left just 60 runs on the final day, the tourists reached their target for the loss of three wickets before lunch.

Despite the result two touches in character with the times, will have sent the spectators home happily.

During the lunch interval on the last day a pair of silver candelabra were presented to Lord Harris on behalf of “seven hundred subscribers, as a mark of their appreciation of the services rendered by him to the cause of County Cricket”.

The second was an entertaining afternoon during which what Wisden describes as a “scratch match” between a Band of Brothers XI and a “World XI” was arranged. Could such a thing happen today?!

Just three weeks later, the legend of The Ashes was born when Australia triumphed by seven runs on their second Test in England.

The Sporting Times carried a mock obituary stating that the body of English cricket would be cremated and the Ashes taken to Australia.

It fell to Kent’s Ivo Bligh to make it his mission to lead England’s tour Down Under in the winter of 1882/83 to bring back the Ashes that were said to have been taken home by the Australians following their victory at the Kennington Oval.

The Australians led by William Murdoch won the New Year game at Melbourne but England fought back to defeat the hosts in a second Test Melbourne and in the decider at Sydney.

Kent’s Edward Tylecote became the first wicket-keeper in Test cricket to score a half century in the second Test.

Following England’s series victory, it is claimed that a group of Melbourne ladies burned a bail, sealed the ashes in the familiar urn and presented it to Ivo Bligh who brought it back to England.

That’s one explanation, but the grandson of Ivo Bligh, Adam, and 11th Earl of Darnley has another.

In the programme commemorating the re-dedication of the grave of his grandparents in 2011 he wrote: “Cricket Historians will have recorded all the facts about the 1882-83 tour of Australia, but what is less well known is that Sir William Clarke invited the team to his estate at Rupertswood for lunch and a friendly match on Christmas day.

“During this match Lady Clarke and her friend Florence Morphy burnt something and placed the ashes in a small urn, presenting this to the England captain Ivo Bligh.”

The legend of the Ashes as one of the great sporting icons was born.