Double Headers

96 Australia: First home of the geographical double-header 1893/94 26-(27)-29-30 Jan NSW v Victoria Sydney W 27-29 Jan Wellington v NSW Wellington D 1895/96 13-14-16-17 Dec NSW v Queensland Sydney W 14-16-17-18 Dec Canterbury v NSW Christchurch W 1895/96 26-27 Dec Wellington v NSW Wellington W 26-27-28-30-31 Dec Victoria v NSW Melbourne W 30-31 Dec-1 Jan New Zealand v NSW Christchurch L The pair of games in 1893/94 coincided with one of the double- headers listed in the previous table, but in that ‘domestic’ instance the side doubling up was Victoria, not NSW. So although this occurrence is memorable as being the only time that two Australian sides double-headed simultaneously, we must wait a little longer for our first ‘triple-header’. Memorabilia from these games: •R.W. (Bob) McLeod took 3 wickets in 4 balls for Victoria in NSW’s second innings at Sydney in January 1890; his brother C.E. (Charlie) McLeod achieved the same feat in NSW’s first innings in the double-heading match at the same venue four years later. •Arthur Coningham (151) made the first-ever first-class century for Queensland in the match at Sydney in mid-December 1895. •Syd Callaway took 14-65 and 15-175 against Wellington and New Zealand respectively in the two matches over Christmas and New Year 1895/96, with 17 of his 29 victims dismissed ‘bowled’ and a further three ‘caught and bowled’. Of the other two ‘state’ tours to New Zealand, neither that by Tasmania in 1883/84 nor that by Queensland in 1896/97 involved any double-heading with those states’ sides in Australia. Tasmania played no matches in Australia in 1883/84, and the Queensland side thirteen years later was back home long before the state’s only domestic match of the ‘home’ season, which took place in mid-April 1897. For our only other set of double-headers by Australians on tour we must move forward half a century and more, though we’re staying in New Zealand, at least in part. Although New Zealand played their first Test match in 1930, Australia met them only once at this level until the 1970s. This was in a hugely one-sided match in March 1946 that was only recognised as a Test match a couple of years later. While declining to send their full Test team to New Zealand for the next 28 years, Australia kept the flame alive by sending a second-string side to visit their neighbours on five occasions between 1945/46 and the eventual resumption of Test relations in 1973/74. Three of these five tours - in 1949/50, 1966/67 and 1969/70 - coincided with Test tours to South Africa by Australia’s bona fide Test squad, and on each occasion both touring sides were frequently in action on the same days. The convention is that these touring sides were known as ‘Australians’ other than in Test matches, when they became ‘Australia’. It is a moot point whether the sides that played representative matches against the