Australia In Sunderland: The Making of a Test Match

By Keith Gregson

On the 9th August 2013 the Australian cricket team will step onto the Emirates Durham International Cricket Ground for a history making Ashes Test - the first ever on Durham soil. However there is a already a solid historical link between Australia and the county and nowhere is this more obvious than in ten matches arranged between Australia and a variety of sides in Sunderland between 1878 and 1977. Sports historian and archivist Keith Gregson has unearthed some remarkable documents and photographs in order to tell the tale of these games as part of the celebrations for this ground-breaking sporting event.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MX Publishing
• Release date: Jul 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780924151

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Introduction

During the summer of 2013, County Durham will host an ‘ashes’ cricket test match! Incredible but true. For those who have watched cricket during the post war years, this is the final page of the final chapter of a fairy tale which began to turn to reality in the 1990s with Durham County’s move from minor county to first- class cricket status. For many cricket lovers, this move occurred virtually out of the blue and was followed with almost whirlwind speed by the opening of the new ground at Chester le Street. After a predictably laboured start, the new county began to enjoy success on the field and by the 21st century the 1st XI was winning trophies and providing the England side with local players and, at one point, a successful locally born captain in Paul Collingwood. In time, the Riverside ground started to be used for representative matches - at first one day internationals then test matches. Now it has achieved the pinnacle of cricketing success - the hosting of a test match between England and Australia.

Moving into reverse gear and back one hundred and thirty five years we find equal excitement in Sunderland; in those days a town and part of the administrative county of Durham; today a city, post-coded ‘Tyne and Wear’ but still loyal to its ancient sporting county. This excitement was due to the impending arrival of the first official Australian cricket team to visit these shores. The date was September 1878 and the visitors’ opponents were to be the XVIII (18) Gentlemen of Sunderland. The Australians were to visit Sunderland to play cricket on a further nine occasions over the following hundred years. One more game was arranged against the Sunderland gentlemen, seven against minor county Durham and the final match, in 1977, was against a Minor Counties select side. Most of these games attracted large crowds and were a financial success. The visitors were also treated royally - a point that was often mentioned by tour officials at post match gatherings.

When Durham became a first class county and both its 1st XI and its new ground continued to build up relations with Australian cricket, the Sunderland legacy must have been hovering in the background. As this relationship reaches a triumphal conclusion with the 2013 ashes test, there could be no better time to tell the tale of Sunderland’s long standing relationship with Australian cricket. In truth, the cheeky subtitle of this booklet - ‘The Making of a Test Match’ - is aimed at attracting the attention of potential readers and if you are reading this, it must have worked. Nevertheless there must be some inkling of justification in using it the phrase as, hopefully, the following pages will make clear.

Sunderland Cricket and Ashbrooke

Of the ten games arranged against touring Australian sides in Sunderland, eight were pencilled in to take place at the Ashbrooke ground - home of Sunderland Cricket Club since 1887.The cricket club which also exists in another guise as a section of the wider Ashbrooke Sports Club (originally Sunderland Cricket and Football (Rugby) Club) played for many years in the Durham Senior League. At the turn of the century in 2000, the 1st XI entered and won the new prestigious North East Premier League. In 2012, year of the ground’s 125th anniversary, both the 2nd and 3rd XIs championed their respective leagues while first team bowler Kieran Waterson was chosen as league player of the year. A couple of years before, on the publication of a major work on sport in general, historians had earmarked Sunderland CC as the oldest established sports club in the ‘sport-hungry’ Tyne and Wear region. The cricket club dates back to 1834 and possibly much earlier.

The overarching Ashbrooke Sports Club is also home to sections known separately as Sunderland Rugby, Tennis, Hockey, Bowls and Squash Clubs and is used as a base for Sunderland Strollers running club. The overarching club has a magnificent archive and the material for cricket history is particularly full, stretching back well into the nineteenth century. The archive of photographs and written material covers not only the history of Sunderland Cricket Club but also that of Minor County Durham for whom Ashbrooke was virtually the home ground. Much of the story about to be told has been made possible due to the written sources in the Ashbrooke archives supplemented by cricket coverage in local papers such as the invaluable Sunderland Echo. The first two games against the Australians were played at one of the cricket club’s former grounds on the road out of the town to Chester le Street.

I would like to thank all the staff at Ashbrooke Sports Club and Sunderland City Library for their assistance in researching this book. The errors, however, are my own.

KG

Ashbrooke, Sunderland, 2013

Game One

XVIII Gentlemen of Sunderland v Australia 1878

In the middle of September 1878, the very first Australian national cricket side to visit England ended its tour with a match in Sunderland against the Gentlemen of Sunderland. There was a very large crowd and the home side ran out victors.