Six of Australia's most senior cricketers — Warwick Armstrong, Victor Trumper, Clem Hill, Tibby Cotter, Vernon Ransford and Hanson Carter — refused to tour England for the 1912 Triangular Tournament after the Board of Control insisted on appointing its own manager rather than the players' choice, Frank Laver.
Clem Hill had already been in a public brawl with selector Peter McAlister in a Sydney hotel room in February 1912, an incident that exposed the depth of player-administrator hostility.
The Board met in March 1912 and confirmed Crouch as manager. The six players, represented in their public correspondence by Hill and Armstrong, withdrew their availability.
The dispute had been brewing for years. Australia's touring sides had traditionally appointed their own managers, with the players keeping a share of the proceeds. The newly empowered Board of Control for International Cricket in Australia, formed in 1905, had been steadily clawing back authority. The flashpoint was the 1912 tour: the Big Six insisted on Laver, a former player and Test selector, as manager. The Board insisted on its own nominee, George Crouch. When neither side would yield, the six players announced they were unavailable. The Board called their bluff and sent a depleted side to England under Syd Gregory. Australia were swept aside in the Triangular Tournament. The Big Six never played for Australia again — Trumper died in 1915, Cotter was killed at Beersheba in 1917, and Hill, Armstrong, Carter and Ransford only resumed Test careers, briefly, after the war.
Feb 1912: Hill and McAlister come to blows in Sydney
March 1912: Board confirms Crouch as manager
March 1912: Six senior players announce they will not tour
April 1912: Weakened Australian party sails for England
1905
Australian Board of Control established
Feb 1912
Hill-McAlister fight in Sydney
Mar 1912
Crouch appointed manager; Big Six withdraw
1912 summer
Weakened Australia tour England, lose Triangular
“We have decided that we cannot place ourselves under the control of a manager appointed by the Board.”
A bitter administrative defeat for the players that established the Australian board as the controlling power in the country's cricket — and gutted the 1912 touring side.
The Big Six dispute marked the moment Australian cricket administration definitively asserted itself over the players. The pattern — board controls revenues, appointments and tours — has held for more than a century.
England v West Indies
1933-07-22
Six months after Bodyline, Learie Constantine and Manny Martindale opened up with sustained leg-theory bouncers at Douglas Jardine in the Old Trafford Test. Jardine, captaining England, stood up and made 127 — his only Test century — proving, at considerable physical cost, that he could face the tactic he had unleashed on Australia.
India vs Pakistan
1996-03-09
On March 9, 1996, Pakistan's Aamer Sohail cut Venkatesh Prasad for four, then pointed his bat at the boundary as if to say 'I'll do it again'. Next ball Prasad bowled him, then animatedly waved him off the field. The send-off became the defining image of the India-Pakistan 1996 World Cup quarter-final, won by India by 39 runs.
England vs West Indies
1954-04-01
Fred Trueman's 1953-54 tour of the West Indies under Len Hutton was a personal disaster. The 22-year-old Yorkshire fast bowler clashed with hosts, opponents, umpires and even his own captain. At the end of the tour MCC withheld his Good Conduct Bonus — a public censure that probably cost him his place on the next two overseas tours and which Trueman resented for the rest of his life.