Johnny Mullagh — born Unaarrimin around 1841 on Mullagh station near Harrow, Victoria — was the outstanding all-rounder of the 1868 Aboriginal tour of England. In 47 matches he scored 1,698 runs at around 23 and took 245 wickets at 10, bowling round-arm in a free, wristy style and frequently keeping wicket between deliveries. The English fast bowler George Tarrant, after bowling at Mullagh in a tour interval, declared he had never bowled to a better batsman.
By the mid-1860s the Aboriginal stockmen of the Western District had been playing organised cricket for ten years against the local white settlers. Mullagh emerged through Edgars' Pine Hills station and the Edenhope and Harrow station teams as the strongest player among them. Tom Wills's coaching at Edenhope in 1866-67 sharpened the technique that Lawrence would build on for the English tour.
After the Boxing Day match at the MCG in 1866, in which Mullagh top-scored, the touring project had to navigate two false starts before Lawrence finally sailed the side from Sydney in February 1868. Mullagh was 26 or 27 at the time of the tour — at the peak of his playing strength.
Mullagh learned cricket on the Edgars' Pine Hills agricultural property at Harrow in Victoria's Western District, where Aboriginal stockmen of the Jardwadjali and surrounding nations had been playing against settlers for at least a decade by the mid-1860s. Coached first by Tom Wills at Edenhope in 1866-67 and then by Charles Lawrence, Mullagh emerged from the Boxing Day match at the MCG in December 1866 as the team's leading batsman and most accurate bowler. On the 1868 English tour he played in every one of the 47 fixtures and was almost the entire side single-handedly. His 1,698 runs across the summer included one century and seven fifties; his 245 wickets, taken at an average of 10, were almost twice the haul of any other Aboriginal bowler. He bowled long spells of round-arm — his 1877 figures recorded 831 maidens in a season — and had the wristy free action that contemporaries said reminded them of the best English professionals. Tarrant, the fearsome Cambridgeshire fast bowler, paid him the most-quoted compliment of the tour. After Tarrant bowled to Mullagh during a lunch interval at one of the matches, he is reported to have said: 'I have never bowled to a better batsman.' Mullagh continued to play for Victorian sides into the 1870s, including a one-off appearance for Victoria against Lord Harris's English touring team in 1879, and went on representing district sides almost to the end of his life. He died at Pine Hills station the day after his 50th birthday in August 1891 and was buried in the Harrow cemetery.
Boxing Day 1866: Mullagh top-scores in the Aboriginal XI v MCC match at the MCG
May 1868: Tour opens at the Oval; Mullagh's bowling praised by Bell's Life
Summer 1868: 47 matches, 1,698 runs at average ~23, 245 wickets at 10
Tarrant bowls at Mullagh in an interval and declares him the best batsman he has bowled at
Mullagh frequently keeps wicket between bowling spells
Oct 1868: Tour ends; Mullagh has out-bowled and out-batted every team-mate
1879: Mullagh plays for Victoria v Lord Harris's English XI
c. 1841
Born at Mullagh station near Harrow, Victoria
1866-67
Coached by Tom Wills at Edenhope
Boxing Day 1866
Top-scores in Aboriginal XI v MCC at the MCG
1868
Tour of England: 1,698 runs and 245 wickets in 47 matches
1879
Plays for Victoria v Lord Harris's XI
Aug 1891
Dies at Pine Hills station, day after 50th birthday
“I have never bowled to a better batsman.”
“Their fielding was very smart and the bowling of Mullagh and Cuzens has been described as straight and very fast.”
“The Grace of Aboriginal cricketers.”
On returning to Australia Mullagh continued to play for the Harrow district side and for various touring elevens, attracting 'Cricket-Mad' crowds wherever he appeared. The 1869 Victorian Aborigines Protection Act curtailed Aboriginal freedom of movement and most of his 1868 team-mates returned to mission life; Mullagh, on the protection of the Edgars' station, was one of the few who continued to play organised cricket. He coached the next generation of Western District Aboriginal cricketers but never toured England again.
The first great Australian all-rounder, the first Aboriginal cricketer to compile a full English summer of figures, and the player who carried the 1868 tour on his shoulders.
Mullagh has, since the rediscovery of the 1868 tour from the 1980s onward, been recognised as the first great Australian cricketer. The Mullagh Medal, struck by Cricket Australia in 2020, is awarded each year to the Player of the Match in the Boxing Day Test at the MCG. A bronze statue of Mullagh stands at Harrow. The Hamilton Spectator's obituary in 1891 had called him 'the [W.G.] Grace of Aboriginal cricketers' — a comparison that, taken with his statistical record, may have been less generous to him than to Grace.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.