#victoria

12 incidents tagged

Ross Gregory Killed in RAF Wellington Crash — Bengal, June 1942

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.

#ross-gregory#wwii#australia

⭐Mild

Bradman's 340* for NSW vs Victoria — Sydney, 1929

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.

#don-bradman#sheffield-shield#nsw

⭐Mild

Bill Ponsford's 437 — A Second World Record, Melbourne 1927-28

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.

#bill-ponsford#victoria#queensland

⭐Mild

Bill Ponsford's 429 — A New World First-Class Record, 1922-23

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.

#bill-ponsford#victoria#tasmania

😂Mild

Roy Park's Wartime Comeback Begins — The Future One-Ball Test Cricketer, 1919

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.

#roy-park#australia#1919

🔥Moderate

Australian Board of Control Founded — Wesley College Melbourne, 6 May 1905

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.

#australian-board-of-control#1905#australia

⭐Serious

Jack Blackham — The Prince of Wicket-Keepers, 1880s

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.

#jack-blackham#wicketkeeping#australia

⭐Mild

Harry Boyle — Spofforth's Partner, 1878-1888

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.

#harry-boyle#fred-spofforth#1878

⭐Moderate

Aboriginal Cricket Tour of England Attempted in 1867 — Blocked by Victorian Authorities

Aboriginal Australian XI

1867-12-01

An attempted Aboriginal cricket tour of England in late 1867 was blocked by the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines in Victoria, who refused to permit the players to leave the colony. Charles Lawrence regrouped, moved his operation to Sydney, and on 8 February 1868 the team secretly boarded their ship at Queenscliff to evade the authorities — the moment that turned the 1868 Aboriginal tour from a stalled commercial project into a covert escape.

#aboriginal-cricket#1867#victoria

⭐Mild

Victoria v New South Wales — The First Inter-Colonial Match at the MCG, March 1856

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.

#intercolonial#victoria#new-south-wales

⭐Mild

Van Diemen's Land v Port Phillip — The First First-Class Match in Australia, February 1851

Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) vs Port Phillip (Victoria)

1851-02-11

On 11-12 February 1851, eighteen years before the Federation that would create modern Australia, teams representing the colonies of Van Diemen's Land and Port Phillip met at the Launceston Racecourse for what is now reckoned the first first-class cricket match played on Australian soil. About 2,500 spectators watched William Henty open the bowling underarm to Duncan Cooper; Van Diemen's Land won by three wickets.

#first-first-class-australia#tasmania#victoria

⭐Mild

Cricket Takes Hold in the Australian Colonies — Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart in the 1840s

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.

#australia#tasmania#victoria