Melbourne, March 1877: The Match That Started Test Cricket

Nobody at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 1877 knew they were making history. There were no banners, no anthems and no commemorative programmes announcing the birth of a new form of the game. A touring English side played an Australian eleven, the crowds came, and a young opening batsman played one of the great innings of his time. Only later did people realise that this was the first Test match.

A tour with ambitions

The match came at the end of a tour led by James Lillywhite, a professional cricketer who had organised a trip to Australia and New Zealand. His side was made up mainly of professional players, and several of the best English cricketers of the day, notably the amateurs, were not in the party. It was a good side, but not the strongest available.

Australia, for their part, were a growing cricketing power. Colonial cricket had been developing for decades, and the standard was rising. Players from New South Wales and Victoria had played one another regularly, and there was a keenness to test themselves against England. The idea of a combined Australian team was still fairly new, which made the occasion more special.

The match begins

The game began on 15 March. Australia, captained by Dave Gregory, won the toss and batted first. At the crease was Charles Bannerman, a New South Wales batsman, who opened the innings and set about the English attack with confidence. The pitch was good, the bowling was decent but not menacing, and Bannerman used the conditions well.

He batted through the first day, scoring freely. As the innings went on, his partners fell around him, and Australia's total grew largely because of his efforts. Eventually, after reaching 165, he was forced to retire hurt, having suffered a split finger that left him unable to continue. It was a remarkable score, accounting for more than two-thirds of Australia's first-innings total of 245.

England respond, then fall short

England replied with 196, a respectable total that left them 49 behind. Australia's second innings did not go to plan, and they were bowled out for just 104, leaving England 154 to win. It was a target within reach in normal circumstances, and the visitors started the last innings with hope.

But Australian bowlers, led by the left-arm medium-pacer Tom Kendall, who finished with seven wickets in the innings, took charge. England collapsed to 108, and Australia won by 45 runs. The crowd, which had gathered in good numbers, celebrated what they saw as a historic victory over the mother country.

Not yet a Test

The match was not described as a Test at the time. That label was applied later, as historians looked back and decided which games between the two sides should be counted as official. The match at the MCG was between a representative English side and a representative Australian one, and so it earned its place at the head of the record books.

A return match was played a couple of weeks later, and England won it, leaving the sides level at one match each. The contest was evenly balanced, which helped the idea of a rivalry catch on. When England toured again, and when Australia travelled to England, the matches became more structured, and the status of Test matches was gradually established.

The cricket of the day

The game that Bannerman and his contemporaries played was very different from today's. There were no helmets, no pads of modern design, and only minimal protection against fast bowling. Pitches were uncovered, so rain could dramatically change a match, and over-arm bowling had only recently become widely accepted. Scores were low by modern standards, which made Bannerman's 165 all the more impressive.

The crowd, too, was part of the occasion. People travelled from across Victoria to watch, and the ground was a focus of local pride. The match was a statement that Australia could compete with the old country, and its result carried a significance that went beyond cricket, touching on the growing sense of colonial identity.

Bannerman himself remained a respected figure in Australian cricket, remembered above all for that first great innings. It is a neat quirk of history that the first Test is associated so strongly with one batsman's individual performance, in a game that would later be defined by collective struggle.

The journey home mattered too. News of the result travelled slowly, by ship and telegraph, so the full story reached England and the wider cricketing world in stages. That delay helps explain why nobody treated the match as a landmark at the time, and why its importance grew only as the contest between the two nations deepened.

From a tour match to a tradition

The rivalry grew steadily. In 1882, Australia beat England at The Oval, prompting a mock obituary of English cricket and the birth of the Ashes legend. Over the following decades, the contest spread to other nations, with South Africa, West Indies, New Zealand, India and others joining the fold.

From that first game in Melbourne has grown a tradition that now spans more than a century and a half. Test cricket is still the sport's most demanding format, and its roots lie in that March match, played without fanfare, in front of a crowd that came for a good game and got a historic one.