CONJUNTO DE PROBLEMAS 4.3A

However, the visit of another English eleven that season overshadowed all other cricket in Sydney and at the end

of the year the NSWCA had to report that, except among

the players, the senior premiership 'failed to create 3 7

any excitement or interest'.

The question arises as to why the NSWCA wanted club cricket to be a popular spectator event. The fact that

34. NSWCA annual report 1890/1 in S M H , 4 Sept 1891 $

SMH, 13 § 17 Oct 1891.

35. Referee, 13 Apr 1892.

36. SMH, 16 Nov 1891.

it was prepared to drop the entry charge to matches at the SCG indicates that the NSWCA did not view club cricket as a source of revenue in the same way that intercolonial cricket mat dies were. The costs of club cricket were modest, and were generally paid either by the players or the clubs. c It is suggested that the reason involved the prestige of the NSWCA. Junior cricket remained popular in the 1890s and as the NSWCU was a minor body compared with the NSWCA it may have seemed improper to the latter that its senior club premiership should be held in lower public regard than

39

junior cricket. Furthermore, as we shall see, club rugby was beginning to become a popular spectacle and the NSWCA was probably no keener to be upstaged by its winter rival than it was to be by the NSWCU. The

senior club premiership did not produce the revival of public interest in senior club cricket that the NSWCA

hoped for. In fact it simply highlighted the inadequacies of what J.C. Davis, cricket and rugby writer for the Sydney sporting weekly, the R e f e r e eand a long-serving delegate to the NSWCA, called a 'corrupt system of club c ricket' / °

38 . See below.

39 . J . Speer i n , o p . cit.

4 0 . Referee 3 1 Mar 1893. Davis wrote his cricket column as 'Not Out ' and his rugby column as 'Cynic'.

- 25-

The six clubs which entered the first season of the senior club premiership were Belvidere, Carlton, Oriental,

Sydney, University and Warwick. Warwick was the oldest, followed by University, Carlton and Belvidere which

4 1 were formed in 1866, 1869 and 1873 respectively.

Except for University the background of the oldest clubs is unclear but according to Davis the clubs engendered considerable fraternal spirit among members, many of

4 2 whom had established club ties while still at school. Davis saw this fraternal spirit as a major hurdle to the establishment of a more adequate system of club cricket in Sydney:

Cricketers, as a rule, have no inclination

towards severing their connections with old club- mates, perhaps schoo1 - fe11o w s . . .Take any club of note as an example, and note with what a fraternal spirit they pull together, and the difficulties of breaking-up these associations in the interests of the game will be found a task full of

4 3 difficulties.

These clubs were formed at a time when club allegiances often overshadowed allegiances to NSW, and while most of the players of that time had stopped playing by 1890

41. The formation date of these and other clubs are calculated from the numbering of annual meetings between 1890 and 1912.

42. Referee3 8 Oct 1890.

weekly companion of the Evening News, the Town and Country

Journal, as players who preferred to play for their club

rather than travel to Melbourne to represent NSW 4 4

against Victoria. In 1890 Faithfull, a solicitor, and Coates, headmaster of Sydney High School, were both

4 5 vice-presidents of the NSWCA.

Sydney and Oriental, the other clubs in the senior club premiership were both relatively new. Sydney CC was formed in 1888 with the backing of the SCG trustees.

The club had full access to the SCG and its players, who came almost exclusively from junior cricket, were coached by the SCG's professional coach Charles Bannerman, the

4 6 scorer of the first test century at Melbourne in 1877. Oriental was a former junior club which, before the

organisation of the senior club premiership, had entered 4 7

the draw for the Reid Cup in 1890.

From the start of the senior club premiership three

clubs, Belvidere, Carlton and Sydney, completely dominated the other teams and the result was a very uneven competition

44. Town and Country Journal, 24 Feb 1 8 72.

45. The position of Coates, Faithfull and other officials mentioned in chapter one are included in tables

contained in chapter five.

46. Referee, 14 Nov 1888 and C. Mart in-Jen kins, The

complete who's who of test cricketers, London 1980, 156

Because of their long and successful traditions before 1890 Belvidere and Carlton had gathered together most

of Sydney's leading players, while the coaching of Bannerman and the excellent facilities at the SCG moulded Sydney

into a very capable side. In 1892/3 Carlton had eight 4 8 NSW players, Sydney had seven and Belvidere had five. As a result:

The Carlton and Belvidere teams enjoyfed] a

monopoly of premiership honours, the Sydney team being the only other which now and then perform[ed]

in anything approaching the usual form of the 4 9

cracks .

As well as producing unattractive cricket for all but the keenest supporters of the leading teams, the uneveness of the- competition discouraged young players from

joining the weaker teams. In February 1893 Carlton played I Zingari, a team which had just joined the senior c o m p e t i t i o n . ^ Carlton won the match without losing a wicket and Davis wondered what the feelings of the young I Zingari bowlers must have been as they were hit to all parts of the ground by the Carlton openers, both Australian representatives. He concluded that it

48. Calculated from lists of club and NSW teams published in the SM H.

49. Referee3 26 Oct 1892.

50. I Zingari, meaning 'the gypsies' in Italian was a wandering team formed in England in 1845,

E.W. Swanton (ed), Barclay's world of cricket3

London 1980, (1966), 521. The Sydney club was

formed in 1886, J. Pollard, Australian cricket : the

game and the players3 Sydney 1982, 541-2. Lists of

office-bearers published in the SiH each season show that the club was socially very elite.