James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Companion 1885

60 B y H. W. HEDLEY (S pecial C orrespondent , Melbourne Age and ). HEN, IN THE YEAR 1861 , T iny W ells (the avant courier of H. H. Stephenson’s English Eleven) landed in Melbourne, cricket in the colonies may be said to have been in its infancy, and a prediction that within twenty years a chosen team from Australia would be found able to compete against the strength of the Old Country with a reasonable prospect of success, would have been considered indeed an ambitious flight of fancy. Spell-bound did the colonial spectators stand and witness the ball flying to the boundary, from the magic cut of C affyn , or, impelled by the vigorous stroke of Surrey's champion hitter, the mighty B en G riffith , soar high away above their heads. The twenty thousand people who witnessed the first day’s play on the Melbourne cricket ground had never seen the like, whilst the best efforts of the local batsmen were frustrated by fielding equally astonishing. The lessons taught by S tephenson ’ s and subsequent visit­ ing English teams were imparted to apt pupils, however, and after the visit of the greatest cricketer of all times, W. G. G race , the improve­ ment in the Australian game was especially marked. It is, of course, unnecessary for me to follow up the stages of advancement through which the game passed, until, in 1878, a representative Australian team for the first time visited England. Since then all readers of this work have been conversant with the peculiarities of the Australian exponents of the game, whose play is now almost as well known in England as in their antipodean home; but on this subject I have only touched un­ avoidably by way of introduction. In England, as in Australia, the Future of Australian cricket has, for some time past, been a subject of considerable and increasing interest, and although the task of expressing one’s opinion of that which is to come can hardly be quite a satisfactory one, I have gladly accepted an invitation from the editor of this work to write a few lines bearing upon the subject. • • . •> . . During the past seven or eight years the names of a select few cricketers have been, season after season, prominent in the Australian first-class division, and their continued success has naturally aroused a question as to whether or not, when the unyielding hand of Time should relegate to the spectators’ ranks such shining lights as these, successors