England vs Australia
2015-09-13
Ben Stokes was given out for 'obstructing the field' after raising his hand to protect himself from a throw, becoming only the 7th player in ODI history to be dismissed that way.
India, Australia, England vs Rest of Cricket World
8 February 2014
India, Australia, and England pushed through a radical ICC restructuring that gave them a vastly disproportionate share of revenue and governance power, undermining smaller cricketing nations.
Australia vs Various
2006-01-01
Matthew Hayden's increasingly large bats prompted rival teams to joke about their size and eventually led to ICC regulations on bat dimensions.
Australia
11 February 2003
Shane Warne was sent home from the 2003 World Cup after testing positive for a banned diuretic, receiving a one-year ban from cricket.
Australia vs Pakistan
1999-11-22
On November 22, 1999 in only his second Test, Adam Gilchrist made an unbeaten 149 to chase down 369 against Pakistan at Bellerive Oval. He and Justin Langer added an unbroken 238 for the sixth wicket — Australia won by 4 wickets and Gilchrist's wicketkeeper-batter revolution was launched.
West Indies vs Australia
1999-03-04
In February 1999 Mark Taylor retired and Steve Waugh became Australia's Test captain. His first series — the Caribbean tour — was a 2-2 dramatic draw featuring Brian Lara's 213 and 153 not out. From there Waugh built the most dominant Test team in cricket history, including a record 16 consecutive Test wins.
Pakistan vs Australia
1998-10-16
On October 16, 1998, Australian captain Mark Taylor finished day two of the Peshawar Test on 334 not out — equalling Don Bradman's highest Australian Test score. The next morning he declared without batting on, choosing the team's chances of victory over the chance to break Bradman's record alone.
Australia
1998-12-08
On December 8, 1998, the Australian Cricket Board revealed that Mark Waugh and Shane Warne had been fined in 1995 for accepting cash from an Indian bookmaker named 'John' (later identified as Mukesh Gupta) in exchange for pitch and weather information. The ACB had concealed the fines for three years. The cover-up became a bigger scandal than the original incident.
Sri Lanka vs Australia / West Indies
1996-02-17
After a Tamil Tigers truck bomb killed 91 people at Colombo's Central Bank on January 31, 1996, both Australia and West Indies refused to travel to Sri Lanka for their 1996 World Cup group matches. The ICC awarded Sri Lanka both games on forfeit — a decision that propelled the eventual champions into the knockouts unbeaten on points.
Australia vs Sri Lanka
1996-03-17
On March 17, 1996 at Gaddafi Stadium, Aravinda de Silva made an unbeaten 107 (and took 3 for 42) as Sri Lanka beat Australia by 7 wickets to win their first World Cup. He was Player of the Match and Player of the Tournament; Sri Lanka became the first host country to win a World Cup.
West Indies vs Australia
1995-05-03
On May 3, 1995, Australia beat the West Indies by an innings and 53 runs at Sabina Park to take the four-Test series 2-1 — and end West Indian dominance of Test cricket after 15 years and 29 unbeaten series. Steve Waugh's 200 and a 231 stand with twin Mark anchored the win.
Australia vs Various
9 December 1998
Australian stars Shane Warne and Mark Waugh admitted to accepting money from an Indian bookmaker known as 'John' in exchange for pitch and weather information during the 1994 tour to Sri Lanka.
India vs Australia
1994-09-09
After 78 ODI innings without a hundred, Sachin Tendulkar finally got his first one-day century — 110 off 130 balls against Australia at the R Premadasa Stadium during the 1994 Singer World Series. Wisden later called it 'an innings that changed ODI cricket forever.'
Pakistan vs Australia
1994-10-11
On the eve of the Karachi Test in October 1994, Pakistan captain Salim Malik allegedly approached Shane Warne, Mark Waugh and Tim May with bribes of around US$200,000 each to underperform. Australia lost the Test by one wicket. Malik denied everything for years; Justice Qayyum's 2000 report found him guilty and banned him for life.
Australia vs West Indies
1993-01-30
On January 30, 1993, Curtly Ambrose produced one of the great fast-bowling spells of the modern era — 7 for 1 in 32 balls — to demolish Australia from 85 for 2 to 119 all out in the Perth Test. He finished with 7 for 25; West Indies won by an innings and 25 runs to seal the Frank Worrell Trophy 2-1.
Australia vs West Indies
1993-01-05
On January 5, 1993, a 23-year-old Brian Lara made his maiden Test hundred at the SCG — and turned it into 277 off 372 balls before being run out. The innings, his fifth Test, announced the arrival of the most exciting batter of the 1990s.
Australia vs New Zealand
1993-11-12
Glenn McGrath made his Test debut for Australia at Perth on November 12, 1993, replacing the injured Merv Hughes. He took 3 for 142 in the match — modest figures, but the start of a 124-Test, 563-wicket career that would form the spine of Australian cricket for the next 14 years.
Australia vs West Indies
1993-01-26
On January 26, 1993, West Indies beat Australia by one run at Adelaide — the narrowest victory by runs in Test history. Australia, chasing 186, were 102 for 8 when Tim May (42 not out) and Craig McDermott (18) added 40 for the ninth wicket and then 42 for the tenth before McDermott was given out caught behind off a Courtney Walsh bouncer with two runs needed.
Australia vs Various
1993-01-01
Merv Hughes, the moustachioed Australian fast bowler, was famous for his creative and hilarious sledging that often left batsmen and teammates in stitches.
Australia vs India
1992-02-03
On the fastest pitch in the world, an 18-year-old Sachin Tendulkar made 114 off 161 balls against Craig McDermott, Merv Hughes and Mike Whitney while teammates wilted. India lost the Test by 300 runs but Tendulkar's innings became a generational reference point — he himself rates it among his very best.
England, Australia
1989-06-08
After 26 Tests without a hundred, Steve Waugh made an unbeaten 177 at Headingley in the first Ashes Test of 1989, kicking off a series in which he averaged 126.50 and announcing himself as the next great Australian batsman.
Australia
1989-05-01
David Boon allegedly consumed 52 cans of beer on the flight from Australia to England for the 1989 Ashes series, setting a legendary drinking record.
England, Australia
1987-11-08
Cruising at 135 for 2 chasing 254 in the 1987 World Cup final, Mike Gatting attempted a reverse sweep off Allan Border's first ball, gloved it to wicketkeeper Greg Dyer, and triggered the collapse that lost England the World Cup.
Australia, New Zealand
1985-11-08
Richard Hadlee took 9 for 52 in Australia's first innings at the Gabba in November 1985, the best single-innings figures by any fast bowler in the 20th century, and followed it with 6 for 71 in the second innings to set up an innings win.
Australia
1984-12-15
Allan Border inherited a broken Australian Test side from Kim Hughes in 1984 and, by the end of the decade, had rebuilt it into the team that would win the 1989 Ashes 4-0 and dominate world cricket for the next twenty years.
England, Australia
1981-07-21
Forced to follow on and at one stage 500-1 against by the Ladbrokes board, England were rescued by Ian Botham's 149 not out and Bob Willis's 8 for 43 to win a Test no team has ever logically come back from.
England, Australia
1981-07-30
Set just 151 to win, Australia were cruising at 105 for 4 when Mike Brearley persuaded a reluctant Ian Botham to bowl. Twenty-eight balls and one run later Botham had taken 5 for 1 and Australia had collapsed to 121 all out.
Australia
1981-12-12
Australian captain Greg Chappell, the most prolific batsman in the country, made four ducks in a row across Tests and ODIs during the 1981-82 home summer — and seven ducks across the season — earning the temporary nickname 'Chappello'.
Australia vs England
12-17 March 1977
The Centenary Test at the MCG in March 1977 commemorated 100 years since the first Test match at the same venue. Australia won by 45 runs — exactly the same margin as the 1877 result. Dennis Lillee took 6/26 and 5/139 across the two innings; Derek Randall made 174 in England's second-innings chase of 463; over 200 surviving Australian and English Test cricketers attended a celebration that became part of cricket's institutional memory.
Australia vs England
November 1974 - February 1975
Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson together took 58 wickets in the 1974-75 Ashes, intimidating Mike Denness's England side into a 4-1 series defeat. Thomson's slingshot action — peaked at speeds estimated above 95 mph in primitive on-field measurements — and Lillee's mature pace and cut produced one of the most one-sided fast-bowling assaults in Ashes history. Five England batters were forced to retire hurt across the series; Denness dropped himself for the fourth Test.
England vs Australia
22-26 June 1972
Western Australian seam bowler Bob Massie took 16 wickets for 137 runs on Test debut at Lord's in June 1972 — 8/84 in the first innings and 8/53 in the second — bowling Australia to an eight-wicket win in the second Ashes Test. The figures are the second-best match haul in Test history (Jim Laker's 19/90 remains the standard) and remain unsurpassed for a debutant.
Australia vs England
5 January 1971
The first one-day international in cricket history was played at the MCG on 5 January 1971 as a hastily arranged consolation after the third Ashes Test was washed out for the first three days. Played over 40 eight-ball overs a side, Australia won by five wickets, John Edrich top-scored with 82 for England, and an estimated crowd of more than 46,000 watched a fixture neither board had originally planned to stage.
England vs Australia
1968-08-22
A thunderstorm drenched The Oval on the final afternoon of the last Ashes Test of 1968, leaving England needing 352 to win — or, in practice, to survive to a draw on an unplayable wet surface. Groundstaff worked desperately to mop up the outfield, and England supporters helped dry the covers. When play resumed with 75 minutes left, Derek Underwood bowled Australia out for 125 to win the match by 226 runs and level the series 1-1.
Australia cricket
1968-01-12
Bill Lawry of Victoria succeeded Bob Simpson as Australia's captain for the 1967-68 series against India, beginning a three-year leadership that produced consistent results but was criticised for excessive caution. His personal batting was as effective as ever — he scored 7,614 Test runs at 47.15 — but his captaincy was eventually ended by the Australian board in controversial circumstances during the 1970-71 Ashes.
England vs Australia
1968-08-23
Recalled at the last minute when Roger Prideaux withdrew with pleurisy, Basil D'Oliveira made 158 against Australia at the Oval on 23 August 1968 in the fifth Test. England won by 226 runs to draw the series 1-1 and retain the Ashes. The innings would, within weeks, force the MCC selectors into the decision that triggered the D'Oliveira Affair and South Africa's expulsion from international cricket.
Australia vs England
1966-02-11
On 11-12 February 1966 Victoria's Bob Cowper batted for twelve hours and seven minutes to score 307 against England at the MCG — then the highest score ever made by an Australian at home, and still the longest innings in Australian Test history. England's attack, containing Snow, Brown and Allen, bowled 138 overs at Cowper before he was finally out. Australia declared at 543 for 8 and the match was drawn.
West Indies vs Australia
1965-03-03
When Bob Simpson's Australia arrived in the Caribbean in early 1965, Garfield Sobers led West Indies into a Test for the first time as full-time captain. He inherited the job from the retired Frank Worrell and within five Tests had won the Frank Worrell Trophy 2-1 on home soil — the first time West Indies had ever held it.
Australia vs England
1965-12-10
Doug Walters made 155 on his Test debut against England at the Gabba on 10 December 1965 — the tenth Australian to score a debut century against the old enemy. He followed it with 115 in his second Test at Melbourne and another in the third at Sydney, becoming the first batsman in history to score centuries in his first three Ashes innings. He was 19 years old.
England vs Australia
1964-07-23
On 23-25 July 1964 at Old Trafford, Australian captain Bob Simpson made 311 against England — his first Test century, in his 30th Test. He batted for 762 minutes (just under 13 hours), faced 743 balls, and helped Australia retain the Ashes by ensuring there could be no defeat in the fourth Test. Only Don Bradman, among Australians, had previously scored a Test triple century in England.
Australia vs South Africa
1963-12-06
On 6 December 1963 at the Gabba, in his first over of the first Test against South Africa, Australian left-arm fast bowler Ian Meckiff was no-balled four times by umpire Col Egar — for throwing. Captain Richie Benaud removed him after the over and never bowled him again. Meckiff retired from all cricket at the end of the match. He was 28.
Australia vs England
1962-11-30
England's 1962–63 Ashes tour produced a 1–1 drawn series — a satisfactory result for the tourists, who retained the urn they had won in 1961 in Australia under the captaincy of Ted Dexter. The series was noted for Ken Barrington's grinding run accumulation, Fred Titmus's off-spin and David Allen's partnership with Trueman in the bowling. Australia, between the Benaud era and the Simpson-Lawry era, were in modest transition.
Australia vs West Indies
1961-01-28
Lance Gibbs of British Guiana became the first West Indian to take a Test hat-trick when he dismissed Kline, Misson and Mackay in consecutive deliveries in the fourth Test against Australia at Adelaide in January 1961. He took 5 for 66 in the innings; West Indies won the match — part of the famous series that had already produced the first Tied Test at Brisbane.
England vs Australia
1961-08-01
Chasing 256 to level the series, England were 150 for 1 and coasting — Dexter had made 76, May was settled — when Richie Benaud switched to bowling round the wicket into the footmarks outside off stump. In 25 balls he took 5 for 12, England collapsed to 201 all out, and Australia retained the Ashes by 54 runs. It was one of the most celebrated tactical switches in cricket history.
Australia vs West Indies
1960-12-14
On 14 December 1960 at the Gabba, Australia and West Indies produced the first tied Test in the 83-year history of the format, with West Indies' Joe Solomon running out Ian Meckiff from side-on with the scores level and one ball remaining. Wes Hall bowled the final eight-ball over with Australia needing six and three wickets in hand; the over produced two run-outs, a single, a missed catch and a tie. The result revived a flagging Test format and gave the world a template for how the game could be played.
Australia vs West Indies
1961-02-17
Midway through the 1960-61 series — and impressed by the spirit Worrell's tourists had brought to Australia after the Tied Test — Sir Donald Bradman and the Australian Cricket Board commissioned a perpetual trophy from former Test fast bowler turned silversmith Ernie McCormick. They named it the Frank Worrell Trophy. It was the first major Test trophy named for a West Indian and remains the prize for every Australia v West Indies series.
England vs Australia
1956-07-31
On 31 July 1956 at Old Trafford, Jim Laker took 10 for 53 in Australia's second innings to finish with 19 for 90 in the match — figures that stand alone in Test history. His 9 for 37 in the first innings was followed by all ten in the second. England won by an innings and 170 runs. Laker's match analysis remains the best in any first-class match anywhere; only Anil Kumble has since matched the ten-wicket innings.
Australia vs England
1955-01-05
On the morning of 5 January 1955 at the MCG, Frank Tyson took 6 for 16 in 6.3 eight-ball overs to finish with 7 for 27 and bowl England to a 128-run win over Australia. The 50,000-strong crowd witnessed the fastest spell of the decade. Tyson, nicknamed 'Typhoon' on tour after his vicious pace, ended the third Test with a haul that turned the 1954-55 Ashes and remains the best by an England bowler in Australia since George Lohmann in 1886-87.
England vs Australia
1953-08-19
On 19 August 1953, England regained the Ashes for the first time since the 1932-33 Bodyline series by beating Australia by 8 wickets at The Oval. The Coronation summer of Queen Elizabeth II ended with Denis Compton sweeping Arthur Morris to the boundary at 5.53pm and Brian Johnston shouting 'It's the Ashes!' on BBC radio. The match closed twenty years of Australian dominance and crowned Len Hutton's first full year as captain.
England vs Australia
1953-06-30
Chasing 343 in the fourth innings at Lord's against Australia, England were 12 for 3 overnight on the fifth day. Trevor Bailey (71 in 257 minutes) and Willie Watson (109 in 346 minutes) batted nearly five and a half hours together to save the match. The stand of 163 on the final day kept the series level and laid the platform for England's eventual Ashes win at The Oval.
Australia v England
1948-08-18
Donald Tallon, the silent Queenslander, kept wicket throughout the 1948 Invincibles tour of England with a precision Don Bradman called 'the finest I have seen'. His most celebrated moment came at The Oval in August 1948, when he dived left-handed down the leg side to glove a Hutton glance off Lindwall and end England's 52 all out — Wisden's 'great finish to Australia's splendid performance'. Tallon was named one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year for 1949.
India v Australia
1947-11-28
Lala Amarnath became Independent India's first Test captain when he led the tour party to Australia in November 1947, only weeks after Partition. Vijay Merchant's withdrawal had thrown the captaincy open; Amarnath was confirmed by the new Indian Cricket Board ahead of departure. India lost the series 0-4, but Amarnath's personal contributions — 228 not out v Victoria and 172 not out v Queensland — and his courteous handling of Bradman's century moment at Sydney made him a popular figure on tour.
Australia v New Zealand
1946-03-29
Ray Lindwall — recently demobilised from the Australian Army's New Guinea campaign — took the new ball in his Test debut at the Basin Reserve, Wellington, on 29 March 1946. He took 1/13 and 1/16 in a match completed in two days as New Zealand were dismissed for 42 and 54. Decades later the ICC retrospectively granted the fixture full Test status (March 1948 ratification), confirming Lindwall's first cap in the same match in which Bill O'Reilly bowled the last over of his Test career.
Dominions XI v England XI
1945-08-27
Three months after VE Day, Keith Miller hit 185 for a Dominions XI against England at Lord's, the highest score of an unforgettable post-war summer. He went from 61 not out overnight to 185 in 99 minutes on the third morning, striking seven sixes — including one over the press box that landed in the upper tier and another that cleared 170 metres into Block Q. Wisden called the match 'one of the finest ever seen' at headquarters; Miller's innings, more than any other in 1945, told English audiences that pre-war balance of power had been broken.
England v Australian Services XI
1945-05-19
Less than two weeks after VE Day, England and an Australian Services XI began a five-match Victory Test series at Lord's that ended 2-2 with one drawn after a final-day finish at Old Trafford on 22 August 1945. Played as celebration cricket and watched by 367,000 people across three grounds, the series re-introduced first-class cricket to a war-weary Britain, launched Keith Miller and confirmed Lindsay Hassett's quality as a captain. Although first-class only — neither board would grant Test status to Services teams — the series functioned as a public reopening of cricket and is the foundation of the modern English summer calendar.
Victoria / Australia (cricket); RAF 215 Squadron (military)
1942-06-10
Pilot Officer Ross Gregory of the Royal Australian Air Force, attached to RAF 215 Squadron, was killed on 10 June 1942 when the Wellington bomber on which he was the observer exploded in mid-air near Gafargaon in the Mymensingh district of Bengal. Gregory had played two Tests for Australia in 1937 and was widely tipped to be a long-term replacement for Bradman in the middle order. He is the only Test cricketer to die in active service in Asia, and his death — alongside those of Farnes, Verity and Turnbull — became part of the running ledger of cricketers lost to the war.
Royal Australian Air Force / Australian Imperial Force (Bradman)
1941-06-30
Don Bradman, Australia's captain and the world's most famous cricketer, was invalided out of military service on 30 June 1941 with chronic fibrositis. He had enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in June 1940, transferred to the Army School of Physical Training at Frankston, and within months was so debilitated by muscular pain in his back and right arm that he could not shave himself or comb his hair. The discharge — barely reported at the time under wartime censorship — kept him out of cricket for almost five years and shaped the legend of his post-war return.
England v Australia
1938-06-26
Captaining England in his first Ashes home Test in charge, Wally Hammond made 240 at Lord's in June 1938 — at the time the highest score by an England captain against Australia and an innings widely rated alongside his 336* at Auckland and his 251 at Sydney as the finest of his career.
England v Australia
1938-08-23
Across 13 hours and 20 minutes at The Oval in August 1938, the 22-year-old Yorkshire opener Len Hutton scored 364 — surpassing Bradman's 334 as the highest individual Test score and remaining the record for almost 20 years. England declared on 903 for 7; Australia, with Bradman injured and unable to bat, lost by an innings and 579 runs, the largest defeat in Test cricket. Hutton's mark is still the England record 87 years on.
England v Australia
1938-06-11
Following on 247 behind at Trent Bridge in June 1938, Stan McCabe played what Don Bradman would call the greatest innings he ever saw. With wickets falling at the other end, McCabe scored 232 in 235 minutes, the last 72 of those runs in just 28 minutes; he reached his double-hundred from 220 balls. Bradman called his team mates onto the pavilion balcony with the words, 'Come and look at this, you'll never see the like of it again.'
England v Australia
1938-08-20
The fifth and timeless Test of the 1938 Ashes at The Oval saw England score 903 for 7 declared — then the highest total in Test cricket — including Len Hutton's 364, the new world Test record. Australia, with Bradman injured and McCabe absent, replied with 201 and 123 to lose by an innings and 579 runs, the largest Test margin ever. The series finished 1-1 with two draws; Australia retained the Ashes by virtue of the previous series result.
Australia v England
1937-01-01
On a wet New Year's Day pitch at the MCG in 1937, with Australia 0-2 down in the series, Don Bradman batted himself at No. 7, sent his tail in first to absorb the sticky, and then made 270 over almost eight hours. It is the highest score made on a sticky wicket in Test cricket, the innings that turned the 1936-37 Ashes, and the one Wisden in 2001 voted the greatest Test innings of the 20th century.
Australia v England
1936-12-04
Don Bradman's first series as Australia's captain, in 1936-37 against Gubby Allen's England, began with two heavy defeats and a press chorus calling for his replacement. Bradman responded with 270 at the MCG, 212 at Adelaide and 169 at the MCG again, and Australia won the next three Tests to take the Ashes 3-2 — the only time in Test history a side has lost the first two Tests of a five-Test series and recovered to win it. The captaincy that English critics had questioned was suddenly the captaincy of a man who would lead Australia for the next 12 years.
Australia
1936-03-06
Clarrie Grimmett was the first bowler in Test history to take 200 Test wickets — reaching the milestone in March 1936 against South Africa, in his last Test innings before being controversially dropped. He finished with 216 wickets in 37 Tests at 24.21, all of them taken between the ages of 33 and 44, and held the world Test wicket record until Alec Bedser broke it in 1953.
England v Australia
1934-06-25
On the third and final day at Lord's in June 1934, Hedley Verity took 14 Australian wickets for 80 runs — the most by any bowler in a single day's Test cricket. Match figures of 15 for 104 gave England an innings victory, their only Lord's Ashes win of the entire 20th century. Bradman fell to him twice. The pitch had been rained on overnight; Verity's slow left-arm did the rest.
England v Australia
1934-07-21
Four years after his 334 on the same ground, Don Bradman returned to Headingley in July 1934 and made another triple — 304 in 430 minutes, sharing a then world-record fourth-wicket stand of 388 with Bill Ponsford. The Test was drawn, but the partnership was the high mark of the 1934 Ashes and proof that Yorkshire's Test wicket could be Bradman's personal property.
England v Australia
1934-08-18
Bill Ponsford's last Test innings was 266 at The Oval in August 1934, in a 451-run second-wicket stand with Don Bradman that won the Ashes for Australia and broke a world record that stood for 57 years. He walked off, raised his bat to a packed Oval, and retired from international cricket at 34.
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 v England
1933-01-14
On 14 January 1933 a Larwood bouncer felled Australian captain Bill Woodfull over the heart, the crowd nearly came over the fence, and that evening MCC manager Pelham Warner walked into the home dressing room to be told, 'There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket, the other is not.' The exchange leaked, the Adelaide Test became the diplomatic flashpoint of Bodyline, and the most famous sentence in Anglo-Australian cricket entered the language.
Australia v England
1933-01-16
Two days after Woodfull was struck over the heart, Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Bert Oldfield top-edged a Harold Larwood lifter into his own temple at Adelaide. The blow fractured his skull. Crucially, the field was conventional — not the leg-theory cordon — but the crowd did not know that. Mounted police lined the boundary as Oldfield was carried off; the Adelaide Test came within a single Australian Board decision of being abandoned.
Australia v England
1933-01-18
On 18 January 1933, two days after Bert Oldfield's skull was fractured in Adelaide, the Australian Board of Control cabled Lord's accusing England of 'unsportsmanlike' play. The MCC's reply offered to cancel the tour outright. Two more cables, the intervention of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons and a quiet retraction of the offending word were needed to keep the series alive. It is the most consequential cable exchange in cricket history.
Australia v England
1932-12-03
In the first Test of the Bodyline series, with Bradman absent through illness and Australia 3 for 82, the 22-year-old Stan McCabe took on Larwood and Voce's leg-theory and counter-attacked his way to 187 not out off 233 balls. The innings included 25 fours and a string of hooks against the line of fire that briefly forced Jardine to drop the Bodyline field. Australia still lost the Test by ten wickets, but McCabe's century stands as one of the great acts of physical and moral courage in Test cricket.
Australia
1932-02-19
Bill O'Reilly debuted for Australia in February 1932 and was, until World War II ended his Test career, the most feared bowler in the world. A leg-spinner who bowled at near-medium pace with sharp turn and bounce, he took 144 wickets in 27 Tests at 22.59, was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year 1935, and stood at the centre of the Bradman-O'Reilly rivalry that would mark Australian dressing rooms across the decade.
England v Australia
1930-07-11
On 11 July 1930 a 21-year-old Don Bradman walked in at 1 for 1 and by stumps had scored an unbeaten 309 — still the only triple-century in a single day's Test play. He went on to 334 the next morning, then the highest individual score in Test cricket, surpassing Andy Sandham's 325. The match drew, but the innings catapulted Bradman from prodigy to phenomenon and underwrote his world-record series tally of 974 runs.
England v Australia
1930-06-27
Two weeks before his Headingley triple, Bradman walked out at Lord's and produced what he would call, decades later, the finest innings of his life: 254 from 376 balls, 25 fours, almost every stroke struck in the meat of the bat. Australia made 729 for 6 declared, levelled the series, and put English bowling on notice that the 1930 tour would be unlike anything previous.
England v Australia
1930-08-16
With the series locked at 1-1 and the Ashes on the line, Bradman walked out at The Oval and made 232 across two days. Australia won by an innings and 39 runs, regained the urn, and finished a series in which Bradman had averaged 139.14. It was the innings during which Douglas Jardine, watching from the pavilion, began thinking seriously about leg theory.
Australia v England
1929-03-08
In the 1928-29 Ashes Wally Hammond scored 905 runs in five Tests at an average of 113.12 — at the time, and for the next 60 years, the most by any batsman in any Test series. England won the series 4-1 under Percy Chapman.
New South Wales v Victoria
1929-01-11
Two months after his disappointing Test debut at Brisbane, Don Bradman made 340 not out for New South Wales against Victoria at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 1929 — at the time the highest individual score made at the SCG, and a single innings that doubled his Test team's confidence in him.
Australia v England
1929-03-08
Percy Chapman's England side, led by Hammond's record 905 runs and supported by the new-ball pair of Larwood and George Geary, won the 1928-29 Ashes 4-1 — the first English Ashes win in Australia for 17 years and the series in which a 20-year-old Don Bradman made his Test debut.
Australia v England
1928-11-30
On 30 November 1928 the 20-year-old Don Bradman made his Test debut against England at the Exhibition Ground in Brisbane. He scored 18 and 1 as Australia were beaten by 675 runs — the largest defeat in Test history at the time — and was dropped for the next Test before returning to begin a career that would average 99.94.
Victoria v Queensland
1927-12-21
Five years after his 429 against Tasmania, Bill Ponsford broke his own world first-class record in December 1927 with 437 against Queensland at the MCG — the first batsman in cricket history to score two individual innings of 400 or more.
England v Australia
1926-08-14
In June, July and August 1926 the 40-year-old Charlie Macartney made centuries in three successive Tests against England — 133 at Lord's, 151 at Headingley (where he reached 100 before lunch on the first morning), and 109 at Old Trafford. He was only the second man in Ashes history to score hundreds in three consecutive Tests.
England v Australia
1926-08-18
Recalled to the England side aged 48 years and 165 days, Wilfred Rhodes took 4 for 44 in Australia's second innings at the Oval in August 1926, helping to win England's first Ashes series since 1912. He remains the oldest man ever to play Test cricket.
England v Australia
1926-08-16
On the third morning of the fifth Test of 1926, after overnight thunderstorms had turned the Oval pitch into one of the most treacherous in Test history, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe added 172 for the first wicket — Hobbs 100, Sutcliffe 161 — in an innings widely regarded as the finest piece of opening batting in cricket.
Australia and English county opposition
1926-07-15
From 1921 onward, the Sydney crowds called Charlie Macartney 'The Governor-General' for the way he batted as if owning the ground. The nickname stuck across cricket and was the source of dozens of contemporary one-liners — including his much-quoted aside to a slip fielder before destroying him for six.
Australia v England
1925-01-01
On a rain-affected New Year's Day at the MCG in 1925, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe walked out to open and put on 283 — at the time the highest opening stand in Ashes Test history and an innings that announced one of the great opening partnerships of all cricket. England lost the match but the partnership had begun in earnest.
Australia v England
1925-03-04
Herbert Collins's Australians retained the Ashes 4-1 in the long, hot summer of 1924-25, but the central story of the series was the bowling of Maurice Tate — 38 wickets in five Tests, then a world record for any bowler in an Ashes series — and the formation, finally, of the Hobbs-Sutcliffe opening partnership.
Australia v England
1925-02-27
On Test debut at the SCG in February 1925, the 33-year-old leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett took 5 for 45 and 6 for 37 against Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Hendren. The 11 for 82 was, and remains, one of the great Test debut performances by a wrist-spinner — a late beginning to a career that would yield 216 Test wickets.
New South Wales and Australia
1925-12-30
Through 1925-26 the 28-year-old Alan Kippax of New South Wales established himself as the heir to the Trumper-Macartney tradition of Australian batting stylists, scoring 1,309 first-class runs at 65.45 and earning the first of his 22 Test caps.
Australia v England
1925-03-04
On his debut Test series, the 30-year-old Yorkshire opener Herbert Sutcliffe scored 734 runs in five Tests at an average of 81.55 — at the time the highest Test debut series aggregate by any batsman in cricket history.
Victoria v Tasmania
1923-02-22
On 22 February 1923 the 22-year-old Bill Ponsford made 429 against Tasmania at the MCG, breaking Archie MacLaren's 28-year-old world first-class record of 424 and announcing the arrival of the most prolific run-machine Australian cricket had yet produced — a man who would go on to break his own record five years later with 437.
Australia v England
1921-03-01
When Warwick Armstrong's Australians sealed the fifth Test on 1 March 1921, they had become the first side in cricket history to win an Ashes series 5-0. Captained from the front by the 22-stone all-rounder nicknamed 'The Big Ship', a side rebuilding from the Great War crushed Johnny Douglas's England in every match of a series that would not be matched in scale until Ricky Ponting's team in 2006-07.
England v Australia
1921-07-04
Captaining England in only his second Test, the Honourable Lionel Tennyson split his left hand fielding a Macartney drive, returned the next day to bat virtually one-handed, and made 63 and 36 against the Gregory-McDonald attack — an act of leadership remembered for a century as one of the bravest innings ever played by an England captain.
Australia v England
1921-08-15
Through the summer of 1921 Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald operated as the most feared new-ball pair the world had yet seen. Together they took 46 wickets in the five Tests as Warwick Armstrong's Australians won the series 3-0, and inspired a decade of English broadcasting and journalism that would obsess about pace until Larwood's Bodyline answer arrived ten years later.
Australians v Nottinghamshire
1921-06-25
Between lunch on a June Saturday and tea on the Monday after, Charlie Macartney made 345 against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge — for almost two decades a world record for runs scored by a batsman in a single day, and an innings that announced the man Sydneysiders called the 'Governor-General' to the wider cricket world.
Australia
1919-10-15
Roy Park, who had served as a doctor with the Australian Army Medical Corps in France, returned to club cricket in Melbourne in late 1919. Within fifteen months he would play a single Test for Australia at Melbourne, face one ball, be bowled for a duck, and never play another. The 1919 comeback is the start of one of cricket's strangest career arcs.
Australia
1917-10-31
Albert 'Tibby' Cotter, the fastest bowler Australia had produced before the war and one of the Big Six who walked out in 1912, was killed in action at the Charge of Beersheba on 31 October 1917. He was 33. He had taken 89 wickets in 21 Tests.
England, Australia services
1916-07-15
From 1915 onwards, charity and services cricket became the only first-rank cricket in England — featuring matches between Royal Navy, Army, RFC, Dominion troops and ad-hoc 'England' XIs raised from cricketers not in uniform. The proceeds went to war funds and the matches kept the game in the public eye.
Australia
1915-06-28
Victor Trumper, the most adored batsman of cricket's Golden Age and to many Australians the finest stylist the game has produced, died of Bright's disease at his Sydney home on 28 June 1915. He was 37 years old. The funeral procession through Sydney was one of the largest the city had ever seen.
Tasmania
1915-09-25
Alfred Williams, a Tasmanian all-rounder who had played first-class cricket for the state before the war and enlisted with the AIF, was among the earliest Australian first-class cricketers to be killed on the Western Front, falling in action in late September 1915. He was in his late twenties.
Australia
1914-02-15
Charlie Macartney established himself in the 1910-1914 period as Australia's most dashing pre-war stroke-maker after Trumper — a small, neat batsman with a back-foot drive so destructive that English crowds would later nickname him 'the Governor-General' for the way he carried himself at the crease.
Australia and England
1914-07-30
Albert Trott, the only batsman ever to hit a ball over the Lord's pavilion and a Test cricketer for both Australia and England, shot himself at his Willesden Green lodgings on 30 July 1914 — five days before Britain entered the war. He was 41, ill, in debt, and had left a hand-written will on the back of a laundry bill bequeathing his wardrobe to his landlady.
England, Australia, South Africa
1912-08-22
The first attempt at a three-nation Test tournament — England, Australia and South Africa playing a round-robin in England in 1912 — was destroyed by the wettest summer on record, a depleted Australian side stripped of its Big Six, an outclassed South Africa, and crowds that simply didn't turn up. No comparable multilateral Test event was attempted for decades.
Australia
1912-02-03
On 3 February 1912 Clem Hill, Australia's captain in the 1911-12 Ashes, and his fellow selector Peter McAlister came to blows in Bull's Chambers in Sydney during a stormy selection meeting. The 20-minute fistfight was one of the most extraordinary administrative incidents in cricket history and a direct precursor of the Big Six dispute.
South Africa
1912-08-15
South Africa in the 1912 Triangular Tournament were a catastrophe. Captained by the English-born Frank Mitchell, they lost all three of their Tests against England — by an innings, by 174 runs and by 10 wickets — and one of two against Australia. The performances confirmed that the googly era was over.
Australia
1912-08-22
Australia's 1912 Triangular side, captained by 42-year-old Syd Gregory after the Big Six refused to tour, was the weakest Australian Test party ever sent to England. They lost the deciding Test at the Oval, finished second in the tournament and effectively lost a Test generation overnight.
Australia
1912-05-01
Syd Gregory was 42, semi-retired and on his eighth tour of England when the Australian Board recalled him to captain the depleted 1912 Triangular side. His tour was personally distinguished — he played his 58th Test, a then-record — but the team was beaten and Gregory never played another Test.
Australia vs England
1912-03-01
England's seam pair Sydney Barnes and Frank Foster shared 66 of the 95 Australian wickets to fall as Plum Warner's MCC side, captained by Johnny Douglas after Warner fell ill, lost the opening Test in Sydney and then won four in a row to take the series 4-1.
England, Australia, South Africa
1910-06-15
The Imperial Cricket Conference, founded at Lord's in June 1909 with England, Australia and South Africa as founding members, became operationally active through 1910-1914 — the body that scheduled the 1912 Triangular and would in time become the modern ICC.
England, Australia, South Africa
1909-06-15
On 15 June 1909, representatives of the MCC, the Australian Cricket Board and the South African Cricket Association met at Lord's and founded the Imperial Cricket Conference, the body that became the International Cricket Council. The proposal had been pushed for two years by South African mining magnate Abe Bailey; it created the first international cricket governing structure.
Australia, England
1909-08-31
Montague 'Monty' Noble played 42 Tests for Australia between 1898 and 1909, captaining 15 of them and winning eight. A medium-paced bowler whose 'spin-swerve' (an early form of off-cutting in-swinger) and a top-order batsman, he scored 1,997 Test runs at 30.25 and took 121 Test wickets at 25. He led Australia to the Ashes win at home in 1907-08 and the away win in 1909.
England, Australia
1909-08-11
Monty Noble's Australians won the 1909 Ashes 2-1 in England, the first Australian series win in England since 1902. Warren Bardsley scored 136 and 130 in the drawn fifth Test at The Oval (9-11 August 1909), becoming the first cricketer ever to make a century in each innings of a Test match. Australia's pace bowler Tibby Cotter and all-rounder Warwick Armstrong led the tour averages.
England, Australia
1908-02-27
Australia, captained by Monty Noble, regained the Ashes from Plum Warner's England side 4-1 in the 1907-08 series. Charlie Macartney made his Test debut as a left-arm spinner (and earned the nickname 'Governor General'); Trumper and Noble batted superbly; the series featured two thrilling close finishes at Sydney and Melbourne.
Australia, England
1907-12-13
Charlie Macartney, picked as a left-arm spinner with handy lower-order batting, made his Test debut at Sydney in December 1907. Kent's KL Hutchings, observing Macartney's confident demeanour at the wicket, dubbed him 'The Governor-General' — a name meant ironically (Macartney was barely 21) but one that stuck for the rest of his career.
England, Australia
1905-08-21
Captaining England for the first time in 1905, Stanley Jackson won all five tosses against Joe Darling, topped both batting and bowling averages on either side (492 runs at 70.28; 13 wickets at 15.46), and led England to a 2-0 series win to retain the Ashes. He retired from Test cricket immediately afterwards, never having toured Australia.
Australia, England
1905-07-15
Albert 'Tibby' Cotter, a stocky 21-year-old fast bowler from Sydney, made his Test debut against England in 1903-04 but became famous on the 1905 Ashes tour. He bowled bouncers as a tactic when most Edwardian fast bowlers thought them ungentlemanly, set packed slip-cordons, and broke stumps. He died in October 1917 in a mounted charge at Beersheba — the only Australian Test cricketer killed in the Great War.
New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland
1905-05-06
On 6 May 1905, at Wesley College in Melbourne, the New South Wales Cricket Association and the Victorian Cricket Association founded the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket — the body that would become Cricket Australia. South Australia refused to join because the constitution gave players no representation; the dispute would eventually trigger the 1912 Big Six walkout.
Australia, England
1905-08-31
Warwick Armstrong, Australia's 26-year-old all-rounder, scored 2,002 runs and took 130 wickets in first-class matches on the 1905 tour of England — one of the great all-rounder tour returns of all time. The 'Big Ship' was Joe Darling's most consistent player; he would go on to play 50 Tests and captain Australia to a 5-0 Ashes whitewash in 1920-21.
Australia
1905-08-15
Joe Darling led Australia in three separate Ashes series — 1899, 1902 and 1905 — and on the 1901-02 and 1902 tours commanded the Australian touring sides at the height of the country's Edwardian cricket. A left-handed batter from South Australia, he combined a measured tactical sense with the durability of the bush cricketer and was the first Australian captain to win an Ashes series in England since 1888.
England, Australia
1904-03-05
Pelham 'Plum' Warner captained the first MCC-organised tour to Australia in 1903-04, regaining the Ashes 3-2 — England's first Ashes series win since 1896. Warner's selection was controversial (Archie MacLaren refused to tour because of it), but the campaign produced R.E. Foster's 287, Bosanquet's googly debut and Warner's own bestselling book 'How We Recovered The Ashes'.
Australia, England
1904-03-07
Hugh Trumble took 7 for 28 in his last Test innings, including a hat-trick of Bosanquet, Plum Warner and Dick Lilley, as Australia beat England by 218 runs at the MCG in March 1904. The hat-trick was Trumble's second in Tests (the first being against England at the same ground in 1902); he was the first man to take two Test hat-tricks. Australia won the dead rubber but lost the series 3-2.
England, Australia
1903-12-11
Reginald Erskine 'Tip' Foster scored 287 on Test debut at Sydney in December 1903, then the highest individual score in Test cricket. It remained a world record until 1930 and is still the highest score by any Test debutant. Foster's epic dragged England, captained by Plum Warner, from 73 for 3 to a first innings of 577 and the platform for an Ashes-winning campaign.
England, Australia
1903-12-11
On England's 1903-04 tour of Australia, Bernard Bosanquet bowled what he himself called the first googly delivered in Australia, dismissing Victor Trumper. The new delivery — a leg-break action producing an off-break — would within a decade reshape spin bowling worldwide. Bosanquet's 6 for 51 in the fourth Test at Sydney sealed the Ashes for Plum Warner's England.
Australia, England
1903-12-17
Chasing 577 in the fourth innings after R.E. Foster's 287 had taken England to a giant total, Australia were 173 for 5 with the Test seemingly lost when Victor Trumper, on 0, was joined by Clem Hill. Trumper went on to 185 not out — his hundred coming in 94 minutes — but it was not enough: Australia, all out 485, lost the match by five wickets. The innings is often ranked alongside Trumper's Old Trafford 104.
England, Australia
1902-07-26
The fourth Ashes Test of 1902 at Old Trafford was won by Australia by just three runs, the narrowest margin in Ashes history until 2005. Sussex bowler Fred Tate, drafted in for his only Test, dropped a key catch off Joe Darling at square leg and was last man out, bowled by Saunders for four. The match defined his life: he was forever known for 'Fred Tate's Test'.
England, Australia
1902-08-13
Set 263 to win and tottering at 48 for 5, England were rescued by Gilbert Jessop, whose 104 in 75 minutes — with his 50 in 43 minutes — remains one of the fastest and most consequential innings in Test history. George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes saw England home by one wicket, immortalising the (probably apocryphal) 'we'll get them in singles' exchange.
Australia, England
1902-07-24
On the rain-affected opening morning of the fourth Ashes Test of 1902, Victor Trumper drove, cut and pulled the England attack to ribbons, reaching 103 not out by lunch — the first century before lunch on day one of a Test match. Wisden, MacLaren and a generation of cricket writers would describe it as among the finest innings ever played.
England, Australia
1902-08-13
When Bill Lockwood was bowled at 248 for 9 in England's chase of 263 at The Oval on 13 August 1902, Wilfred Rhodes joined his Yorkshire team-mate George Hirst with 15 runs still required against Trumble, Saunders and Noble. The two professionals from Kirkheaton edged, deflected and sometimes simply blocked their way to a one-wicket win — the foundation of perhaps cricket's most famous (and most disputed) quotation, 'we'll get them in singles'.
Australia, England
1902-09-01
Jack Saunders, the left-arm spin bowler from Victoria, took 123 first-class wickets at 16.95 on the 1902 tour of England — bowling alongside Hugh Trumble in the side that won the Ashes 2-1. Saunders bowled the last ball of Fred Tate's Test at Old Trafford and was Australia's leading wicket-taker on the tour after Trumble.
England, Australia
1902-05-29
On 29 May 1902 at Edgbaston, on a damp pitch, Wilfred Rhodes (7 for 17) and George Hirst (3 for 15) bowled Australia out for 36 — for almost a century the lowest total in Test cricket. The remarkable bowling, taking 90 minutes, is part of the Edgbaston Test legend; the match was eventually drawn after a thunderstorm washed out two days.
Australia, England, South Africa
1902-08-13
South Australian left-hander Clem Hill, in 1902, scored 1,061 Test runs across the Ashes series in England and the immediately following series in South Africa — becoming the first batsman to make 1,000 Test runs in a calendar year. The record was not equalled until Don Bradman's 1948.
England, Australia
1901-12-13
Sydney Barnes, then a Lancashire League professional with seven first-class matches to his name, made his Test debut at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 13 December 1901, taking 5 for 65. He went on to take 19 wickets in his first two Tests before injury ended his tour. Barnes' career was unique: 27 Tests, 189 wickets at 16.43, but only 47 first-class County Championship matches, his preference being the better-paid Minor Counties and Lancashire League.
England, Australia
1899-06-01
Wilfred Rhodes made his Test debut at Trent Bridge in June 1899 — the same match that proved to be W.G. Grace's last Test. Rhodes' Test career would span 30 years 313 days, the longest in history; he would also be the oldest Test player ever (52 years 165 days). Through the 1900s he was first England's slow left-arm spinner and then, by 1909, an opening batsman.
England v Australia
1899-06-15
On 15-17 June 1899, in only his second Test match, the 21-year-old Victor Trumper played a 135 not out at Lord's that announced him as the most original batsman in cricket. Coming in at 59 for 3, he batted across two days, drove and cut Bobby Peel's spiritual heir Wilfred Rhodes through every gap, and helped Australia to an innings victory and a 1-0 Ashes lead they would not surrender. Within a year he was Australia's most-photographed sportsman.
Australia
1899-04-15
When Australia's selectors announced the squad for the 1899 tour of England, the inclusion of 21-year-old Sydney clerk Victor Trumper — who had played only one full Sheffield Shield season — caused a national row. Joe Darling, the new captain, had insisted on his selection over established state players. Trumper had to be lent the £200 tour fee to accept. Within ten weeks he was making 135* at Lord's. The selection is one of the great calls in Australian cricket history.
England v Australia
1899-08-15
The 1899 Ashes was the first Test series in England to consist of five matches rather than three. Australia, captained by Joe Darling on his first tour as skipper, won the only match decided — the second Test at Lord's by 10 wickets — and drew the other four to take the series 1-0. It was Australia's first Ashes win on English soil since 1882, and the launch series for Victor Trumper, Monty Noble, Hugh Trumble at his peak and Ernie Jones.
Australia v England
1898-01-01
On 1 January 1898 at the MCG, umpire Jim Phillips called Australia's Ernie Jones for throwing — the first bowler ever no-balled for a suspect action in a Test match. Jones, the South Australian fast bowler famous for sending a ball through W.G. Grace's beard the previous summer, had been called once before the Test by Phillips in a tour match. The Melbourne call set off a 'chucking question' that would consume English county cricket through 1900-01 and end Arthur Mold's career.
Australia v England
1898-01-01
On 1-3 January 1898, the 20-year-old Adelaide left-hander Clem Hill came in at 6 for 58 and made 188 — his maiden Test century, and still the highest Ashes Test score by a player under 21. Australia recovered to 520 and won by an innings. The innings established Hill as the central figure of Australian batting between Trumper and Bradman; he would average 39 across 49 Tests until 1912.
Australia v England
1898-03-04
On 4 March 1898, in the dead-rubber Fifth Test at Sydney, Australia's South Australian opener Joe Darling reached his Test hundred in 91 minutes — at the time the fastest Test century in cricket. He went on to 160 in 165 minutes with 30 boundaries. By the end of the series Darling had become the first player to score 500 runs in an Ashes series and the first to score three hundreds in any series. Within fifteen months he was Australia's captain.
Australia v England
1898-01-01
On 1 January 1898 at the MCG, Montague Alfred Noble — a 24-year-old New South Wales medium-pacer and middle-order batsman — made his Test debut against Stoddart's England. He took 6 for 49 in England's second innings as Australia won by an innings and 55 runs. It was the start of a 42-Test career, fifteen as captain, that would produce 121 Test wickets at 25.00 and a reputation as Australia's most complete all-rounder before Keith Miller.
Australia v England
1897-12-13
Ranjitsinhji arrived in Sydney for the First Test of the 1897-98 Ashes with quinsy, lost 12 pounds in three days, and was excused from the field for the start of the match by rain. When he batted, weakened and at number seven, he made 175 in 223 minutes — then the highest Test score by an England batsman in Australia. England won the Test by nine wickets. Australia would win the rubber 4-1, but Ranji's Sydney innings is often cited as his greatest.
England (Stoddart's XI)
1897-12-13
The 1897-98 Ashes tour of Australia, captained by Andrew Stoddart for the second time, became the most personally bleak overseas English tour of the century. News of his mother's death reached him before the First Test; he stood down from the first two Tests and let Archie MacLaren lead. Stoddart returned for the Third and Fourth Tests, made 17, 24, 9 and 25, was barracked at Sydney, and walked off the cricket field for the last time. The tour was the high tide of his unravelling — he died by suicide in 1915.
England v Australia
1896-07-18
On 18 July 1896 K.S. Ranjitsinhji, 23, a Cambridge graduate from Nawanagar, walked out at Old Trafford for his Test debut and made 62 in the first innings and an unbeaten 154 in the second — including 113 between the start of the third morning and lunch, becoming the first batsman to score a century before lunch in Test cricket. The MCC selectors had refused him for the First Test on grounds that were widely understood to be racial; Lancashire's local committee picked him for Manchester. Australia won the Test, but the leg-glanced 154* changed cricket's conversation about who could play it.
England v Australia
1896-08-10
On a damp Oval pitch in August 1896, Australia's off-spinner Hugh Trumble took 6 for 59 and 6 for 30 — match figures of 12 for 89 — yet finished on the losing side. Australia, set 111 to win, collapsed to 19 for 8 and were all out for 44, England winning the third Test and the series 2-1. Wisden called Trumble 'on all wickets distinctly the best bowler on the side'; the match remains one of cricket's most celebrated bowling efforts in defeat.
Australia v England
1895-03-06
Across the five Tests of the 1894-95 Ashes, George Giffen — Australia's captain, opening bowler and number-three batsman — scored 475 runs at 52.78 and took 34 wickets at 24.12. The combined haul is still, 130 years later, the best all-round performance in any Test series in cricket history. Australia lost the rubber 2-3, but Giffen's series average has never been matched.
Australia v England
1895-01-11
On Test debut at Adelaide in January 1895, the 21-year-old Victorian all-rounder Albert Trott — playing alongside his older brother and captain Harry — batted at number ten for 38 not out and 72 not out (an unbeaten 110 in the match) and took 8 for 43 in England's second innings. Australia won by 382 runs. It was statistically the most complete Test debut in cricket history; within four years Trott would, for separate reasons, never play Test cricket for Australia again.
Australia v England
1894-12-20
On 20 December 1894, with Australia 113 for 2 chasing 177 and the match seemingly won, overnight rain and a hot Sydney sun turned the SCG into a sticky. Bobby Peel — pulled from a hangover by his captain Andrew Stoddart — took 6 for 67 and England won by 10 runs. It was the first time in Test history a side had won after following on, after Australia's first-innings 586 had piled up against an England 325. Wisden called it 'probably the most sensational match ever played either in Australia or in England.'
Australia v England
1894-12-29
Days after the Sydney follow-on miracle, England captain Andrew Stoddart played the innings he later called 'the century of my career' — 173 from 297 minutes at the MCG, taking England 2-0 up in the 1894-95 Ashes. The score remained the highest by an England captain in Australia until Mike Denness passed it 80 years later in 1974-75. Stoddart's tour was the high tide of his cricketing life.
England v Australia
1891-12-15
When the Earl of Sheffield financed an English tour of Australia in 1891-92 with WG Grace as captain, he ended the trip by donating £150 to the New South Wales Cricket Association to fund a perpetual trophy for inter-colonial cricket. The result: the Sheffield Shield, contested between NSW, Victoria and South Australia from 1892-93 onwards, and the foundational competition of Australian first-class cricket.
Australia v England
1888-02-10
On a Sydney pitch reduced to a glue-pot by rain, George Lohmann and Bobby Peel bowled Australia out for 42 in the second innings of the only Test of the 1887-88 tour — Lohmann 5 for 17, Peel 5 for 18, the pair unchanged through the innings. The match also produced Charlie Turner's 7/43 at the other end of the same wet stage and a 126-run England win.
England v Australia
1888-07-17
On 17 July 1888, the second day of the first Test at Lord's, 27 wickets fell — a single-day Test record that has stood for 138 years. England were dismissed for 53 in 55 minutes, Australia for 60, England for 62 — three full innings inside one day's play, on a Lord's pitch baked then drenched. Australia won the match by 61 runs.
Australia (touring England)
1888-08-31
On the 1888 Australian tour of England, Charlie Turner and JJ Ferris bowled essentially unchanged through innings after innings, taking 534 of the 663 wickets that fell to the Australians across the summer. Turner's 283 first-class wickets that season was a record for any bowler in any English summer. The pair were named in the inaugural Wisden Cricketers of the Year list in 1889.
Australia
1888-09-30
Charles Thomas Biass Turner, nicknamed 'The Terror', was the outstanding bowler of the late 1880s. In the wet English summer of 1888 he took 283 first-class wickets at 11.27 — a tally only ever bettered by Tom Richardson in 1895 and Tich Freeman in 1928 and 1933. The previous Australian summer he had become the only bowler ever to take 100 first-class wickets in a single Australian season. He reached 50 Test wickets in only six matches (still the record) and was the second bowler in history to 100 Test wickets, behind Johnny Briggs by three days in 1895.
Australia / England (one tour)
1888-09-30
John James Ferris was the left-arm partner who shared the new ball with Charlie Turner through the great Australian bowling years of the late 1880s. He took 61 Test wickets in only 9 matches at 12.70 apiece — one of the best averages in Test history — was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1889, and later qualified for England by residence and toured South Africa as an Englishman in 1891-92, taking 13 wickets in his only Test for his second country. He died of typhoid fever in Durban in 1900, aged 33.
Australia
1888-08-31
Alexander Chalmers 'Alec' Bannerman, younger brother of Test cricket's first centurion Charles Bannerman, played 28 Tests for Australia between 1879 and 1893 as the most determined defensive opener of the 19th century. Where Charles attacked, Alec stonewalled. He never made a Test century in 50 innings; his highest was 94. His patience was a moral asset to a young Test side that could not yet match the depth of England's batting.
England v Australia
1886-08-12
Surrey medium-pacer George Lohmann had played two Tests in 1886 with a single wicket to show for them. At The Oval in August he changed his life: 7 for 36 and 5 for 68 — match figures of 12 for 104 against Australia, with England winning by an innings and 217. The performance launched the bowler whose career Test average (10.75) is still the lowest for any bowler with 100+ Test wickets.
Australia v England
1885-01-19
When the 1884 Australian touring side returned home and demanded 50% of the gate receipts for the second Test of the 1884-85 series at Melbourne, the Victoria Cricket Association refused. The result: nine of the eleven first-Test players boycotted; Australia fielded a side with eleven changes (only Sammy Jones and Tom Horan retained from earlier matches), all eleven men were Test debutants for that match alone, and England won by 10 wickets.
England v Australia
1884-08-12
On 11-12 August 1884, Australia's captain Billy Murdoch became the first man to score a double century in Test cricket — 211 against England at The Oval, in 525 minutes off 525 deliveries with 24 fours. Australia made 551, then a Test record. England, in desperation, used all eleven players as bowlers; the wicketkeeper Hon Alfred Lyttelton, bowling underhand lobs with his pads on, finished with the best figures, 4 for 19.
England v Australia
1884-07-21
On 21-23 July 1884, Lord's hosted its first Test match. England, with the Lancashire amateur AG Steel scoring 148 — the first Test century at headquarters — beat Australia by an innings and 5 runs. From this match onwards, Lord's became the spiritual centre of England's home Test programme.
England v Australia
1884-08-13
Sent in at number 10 to register a protest at the batting order, Surrey amateur Walter Read responded by hammering 117 off 155 balls in 113 minutes — the only Test century by a number 10 batsman, set in 1884 and not equalled in 142 years. With William Scotton blocking from the other end, the pair added 151 to save England from defeat against Murdoch's Australians.
England v Australia
1884-07-10
Old Trafford became the second English ground to stage a Test on 10 July 1884 — and was promptly rained off for the entire first day, setting a Manchester precedent that has held for over 140 years. The match was eventually drawn after Australia had inched ahead on first innings. The Lancashire ground would go on to host more Ashes washouts than any other.
Australia v England
1883-01-19
On 19 January 1883 Billy Bates of Yorkshire took the first hat-trick by an England bowler in a Test match — McDonnell, Giffen and Bonnor in successive deliveries — on the way to match figures of 14 for 102 and an innings win for Bligh's team at the MCG. It remained the only Ashes hat-trick by an England bowler for the rest of the 19th century.
England v Australia
1882-08-29
Across two August days in 1882, Australia beat England by seven runs at The Oval in the only Test of the tour. Fred 'The Demon' Spofforth took 14 for 90 in the match — 7/46 in the first innings and 7/44 in the second — to bowl England out for 77 chasing only 85. Within hours The Sporting Times printed a mock obituary declaring that English cricket was dead and that 'the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.' The most famous trophy in the game was born from a satirical paragraph.
England v Australia
1882-08-29
Fred 'The Demon' Spofforth took 7 for 46 and 7 for 44 at The Oval in August 1882, match figures of 14 for 90 that bowled Australia to a 7-run win and gave birth to the Ashes legend. The second-innings spell — bowled in tandem with Harry Boyle — broke an England chase of just 85 and stood as the best match analysis in Test cricket for 31 years.
England v Australia
1882-09-02
Four days after Australia's 7-run win at The Oval, the satirical weekly The Sporting Times printed a 30-line mock obituary by Reginald Shirley Brooks announcing the death of English cricket and noting that 'the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.' The squib was meant for one Saturday's amusement and ended up giving cricket its most enduring trophy name.
England v Australia
1882-08-29
With England needing 10 to beat Australia at The Oval and the Cambridge amateur CT Studd waiting at the non-striker's end, Yorkshire professional Ted Peate took strike at number 11, swung at Harry Boyle and was bowled. Asked in the dressing room why he hadn't simply blocked and given Studd the strike, Peate is supposed to have replied, 'I couldn't trust Mr Studd.' The line — Yorkshire pro on Cambridge amateur — has outlived everyone involved.
England v Australia
1882-12-30
Six weeks after the Sporting Times mock obituary, the Hon Ivo Bligh sailed for Australia at the head of a private English team with the explicit, half-joking goal of bringing 'the Ashes' home. England lost the first Test at Melbourne, won the next two at Melbourne and Sydney to take the official series 2-1, and at the end of the tour Bligh was presented with a small terracotta urn that, decades later, became the most famous trophy in cricket.
England v Australia
1882-08-29
On the second morning of the 1882 Oval Test, with Australia's score at 114 in their second innings, young Sammy Jones wandered out of his crease to do some gardening — and WG Grace, ball in hand at point, threw down the stumps. Spofforth, watching from the pavilion, called Grace 'a bloody cheat' and reportedly stormed into the England dressing room with the line, 'this will lose you the match.' Two hours later he had taken 7 for 44 and Australia had won by 7 runs.
Australia
1882-08-29
Jack Blackham of Victoria stood up to the stumps even to the fastest Australian bowlers in the 1880s, in gloves Wisden later described as 'little more than gardening gloves'. He was the wicketkeeper in the inaugural 1877 Test, kept in 35 Tests through 1894, and effectively eliminated the long-stop position from cricket. Wisden called him 'the prince of wicket-keepers' — a title that has stayed attached to him for 140 years.
Australia / England (one Test)
1882-08-29
William Lloyd Murdoch captained Australia in 16 Tests through the 1880s, scored the first Test 200 (211 at the Oval in 1884), held the Test record score (153* against England in 1880) for several years, and was the architect of Australia's 7-run win at the Oval in 1882. He later (controversially) played one Test for England against South Africa in 1891-92.
Private English XI v Australia
1881-09-15
Through the 1880s, three Nottinghamshire and Sussex professionals — Alfred Shaw, Arthur Shrewsbury and James Lillywhite — organised three private English tours of Australia (1881-82, 1884-85, 1886-87) outside MCC channels. They paid their own players, kept the gate receipts, and demonstrated that professionals could run international cricket as a business. Their model prefigured Packer's World Series Cricket nearly a century later.
England v Australia
1880-09-06
On 6 September 1880, in the very first Test match played in England, the 32-year-old WG Grace opened the innings with his elder brother EM and went on to score 152 — the first Test century by an England batsman, on debut and on home soil. England won by five wickets. The Grace family's three brothers (WG, EM and GF) all played, the only time three brothers have appeared together in a Test match.
Australia
1880-09-06
George Bonnor stood six feet six, weighed 17 stone and could throw a cricket ball further than any man of his era. The 'Bathurst Giant' played 17 Tests for Australia in the 1880s, hit a six measured at 164 yards out of the MCG, completed three runs from a single shot before being caught at the boundary, and is supposed to have smashed the Melbourne pavilion clock with one stroke. He was the era's tallest, heaviest, biggest-hitting Test cricketer.
Australia
1879-02-08
Charles Bannerman, the man who had scored Test cricket's first century in March 1877, played his last Test in February 1879. He continued for NSW until 1888 but his career declined sharply. He coached in Melbourne, Sydney and New Zealand, and stood as umpire in twelve Tests between 1887 and 1902. He died in poverty in Sydney in 1930.
Australia v England
1879-01-02
On 2 January 1879, in only the third Test ever played, Fred Spofforth took the first hat-trick in Test cricket — Vernon Royle bowled, Francis MacKinnon bowled, Tom Emmett lbw — at the MCG. He finished the innings with 6 for 48 and the match with 13 wickets for 110 runs, an Australian win by 10 wickets, and an early sketch of the Demon Bowler legend that would mature at The Oval three years later.
Australia vs MCC
1878-05-27
On 27 May 1878 the touring Australians, on their first visit to England, bowled MCC out twice in a single day at Lord's. MCC made 33 and 19; Australia made 41 and 12 for 1 to win by 9 wickets. Fred Spofforth took 6/4 (including a hat-trick) and 4/16; Harry Boyle 3/14 and 6/3. W.G. Grace was clean-bowled by Spofforth for 4. The match made Australian cricket's reputation in a single afternoon.
Australia in England
1878-05-01
Billy Murdoch, a 23-year-old NSW solicitor and wicketkeeper, sailed with the first Australian touring side to England in 1878 as the team's first-choice gloveman. By the end of the season he had ceded the gloves to Jack Blackham and turned his attention exclusively to batting — a switch that would lead him to the Australian captaincy in 1880 and to many of the great Test batting innings of the next decade.
Australia
1878-05-27
Harry Boyle of Bendigo was the medium-pacer who shared the new ball with Fred Spofforth on Australia's first six tours of England. At Lord's on 27 May 1878 he took 3/14 and 6/3 against MCC; he played 12 Tests, took 32 wickets, and was Spofforth's accuracy-and-cunning foil for a decade.
Australia vs England
1877-03-15
Cricket's first Test match was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground from 15 to 19 March 1877. A combined Australian XI captained by Dave Gregory beat James Lillywhite's touring English professionals by 45 runs. Charles Bannerman scored 165 retired hurt — the first Test century — and Tom Kendall took 7 for 55 in the second innings to clinch the win. The match was not officially designated a Test until decades later, but it has stood ever since as the start point of international Test cricket.
Australia vs England
1877-03-15
Charles Bannerman, a 25-year-old Sydney professional born in Kent, scored 165 before retiring hurt with a split finger in the first innings of the first Test at Melbourne in March 1877. It was the first century in Test cricket and represented 67.34% of Australia's total of 245 — a proportion no other Test centurion has ever matched.
Australia vs England
1877-03-19
Tom Kendall, a Tasmanian-born left-arm medium-pacer and the only Tasmanian in the side, took 7 for 55 to bowl Australia to a 45-run win in the first Test at Melbourne. England, set 154 to win, were dismissed for 108 on the fourth day, leaving Kendall with the first match-winning bowling figures in Test history.
Australia vs England
1877-03-15
Dave Gregory, a NSW public servant and the eldest cricketing brother of a long-running Australian dynasty, captained the All-Australian XI to a 45-run victory over James Lillywhite's England side at Melbourne in March 1877. He thus became the first Test captain in cricket history.
Australia vs England
1877-03-31
A fortnight after losing the first Test, Lillywhite's England side won the rematch on the same Melbourne pitch by 4 wickets. Alfred Shaw took 5/40 and 4/41, George Ulyett scored 52 in the second innings, and the unofficial 1877 series was tied 1-1.
Australia vs England
1877-03-16
Billy Midwinter, the Gloucestershire-born Australian all-rounder, took 5 for 78 in England's first innings of the inaugural Test at Melbourne — the first five-wicket haul in Test cricket. He went on to become the only man to play Test cricket for both England and Australia.
Australia vs England
1877-03-15
Tom Garrett of NSW was 18 years and 232 days old when he opened the bowling for Australia in the first Test in March 1877. He remains the youngest player ever to represent Australia against England — a record that has stood for nearly 150 years. Garrett took 2/22 and 2/9 in the match and went on to play 19 Tests over the next decade.
Australia vs England
1877-03-13
Frank Allan of Victoria, hailed by W.G. Grace and others as 'the bowler of the century', sent a telegram two days before the first Test telling the selectors he could not play because it was carnival week in Warrnambool and his friends were in town. He never played in the inaugural Test and ended up with a single Test cap two years later.
England (W.G. Grace's XI) in Australia
1873-10-01
Two weeks after marrying Agnes Day in October 1873, W.G. Grace took her on his honeymoon by sailing to Australia at the head of a private cricket tour. He was paid £1,500 — the equivalent of well over £100,000 today — for what was effectively a privately organised England side. The tour played 15 matches across Australia and laid the groundwork for the Test era that followed three years later.
Surrey and All-England elevens
1858-08-01
By 1858, at thirty-two, William Caffyn of Reigate was at the peak of his powers as Surrey's leading all-rounder — a graceful right-handed batsman and a sharp round-arm medium bowler. Selected for the 1859 North America tour and both Australian tours of 1861–62 and 1863–64, Caffyn chose to remain in Australia after the second tour and spent the next three years coaching in Melbourne and Sydney, training a generation of Australian cricketers who would return to beat England in the 1870s.
Surrey, Middlesex and All-England elevens
1858-06-01
Charles Lawrence, a fast roundarm bowler from Middlesex who also played for Surrey, was in the late 1850s an established professional of the second rank — a reliable bowler and capable batsman, selected for the 1861–62 Australian tour under Stephenson. Like Caffyn after the 1863–64 tour, Lawrence chose to remain in Australia, coaching at the Albert Cricket Club in Sydney and producing the first generation of New South Wales cricketers who would compete with England on level terms.
Victoria vs New South Wales
1856-03-26
On 26-27 March 1856 the Melbourne Cricket Ground hosted its first inter-colonial fixture, between Victoria and New South Wales. NSW won by three wickets in front of a crowd of around 5,000 — among them many gold-rush emigrants. The match opened the Vic-NSW rivalry that would, with the Sheffield Shield from 1892-93, become the spine of Australian first-class cricket.
Local Melbourne Cricket Club fixture
1854-09-30
On 30 September 1854 the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the future cathedral of Australian cricket, hosted its first match. The Melbourne Cricket Club, displaced from its previous home by Australia's first steam railway line, had been granted a fresh ten-acre site in Yarra Park the year before. The ground would within a generation become the most important cricket venue in the southern hemisphere.
Melbourne Cricket Club and Victorian goldfields clubs
1851-10-01
The discovery of gold in Victoria in July 1851 triggered a migration of tens of thousands to the colony, many of them English-born immigrants who brought cricket with them. Within two years cricket clubs had sprung up across the goldfields at Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine, creating the broadest base for the game yet seen in the colonies and accelerating the development of Australian cricket by a generation.
Tasmania vs Victoria
1846-12-16
On 11-12 February 1851 the first inter-colonial cricket match in Australia was played between Tasmania (then Van Diemen's Land) and Victoria at Launceston, but the cricket culture from which it grew had been put together in the 1840s — with the Melbourne Cricket Club founded in 1838, the first match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1853, and Sydney clubs playing each other from the early 1840s. Cricket was, by the end of the 1840s, the dominant summer game in every Australian colony.
Sydney cricket clubs
1845-01-01
Cricket in New South Wales in the 1840s was a more organised and commercially vigorous affair than its Victorian counterpart, reflecting Sydney's longer colonial history. The Australian Cricket Club and its successors played regularly at Hyde Park and the Domain, staging matches between military garrison sides and civilian clubs that drew substantial crowds long before the gold rush brought tens of thousands of new immigrants to Victoria.
Melbourne Cricket Club
1838-11-15
The Melbourne Cricket Club — destined to become one of the most powerful institutions in Australian and world cricket — was founded at a meeting on 15 November 1838, only three years after the city itself had been established. The MCC would in time own and operate the Melbourne Cricket Ground, host the first Test match (1877), and shape every major decision in Australian cricket for the next 150 years.
Officers vs Civilians
1824-01-29
On 29 January 1824 a cricket match was played at Hobart between officers of the Van Diemen's Land garrison and a civilian side — the earliest documented cricket fixture in Tasmania and the second-earliest in Australia (after Sydney 1804). The fixture is the foundation entry of Tasmanian cricket and the second link in the early Australian cricket map.
Officers vs Civilians
1804-01-08
On 8 January 1804 the Sydney Gazette — the first newspaper printed in Australia — reported a cricket match played in Hyde Park, Sydney, between officers of the colony and a side of civilians. It is the earliest documented cricket match in Australia and the founding event of Australian cricket history. The fixture predates the formal Australian colonial competition by more than half a century.