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Even had the Queen really commanded Stoddart to return home ‘without delay’, it would have meant cancelling a further four matches. Today, a Test tour would finish with the final Test match, and everybody would be lifted home almost at the speed of sound in a Boeing 747, rather than with seaborne pleasure over a period of weeks.
Now, the English cricketers, on a wave of euphoria, had what was classified as a holiday trip to Tasmania, though Johnny Briggs might have wished it was a weekend in Blackpool, for he was thrown from his bunk during SS Coogee’s choppy crossing of Bass Strait.
They played an Eighteen of Northern Tasmania on a turf pitch at Launceston, with only 14 of the locals permitted to field at any one time, and with Richardson and Peel rested from the English XI following their big efforts in the Melbourne Test. Ward and Brown might almost have qualified to the same degree for a rest after their amazing efforts. The Sportsman felt that the ‘severe mental strain’ imposed on them made that stand of 210 ‘the finest performance ever witnessed on the cricket field’. And yet … some of those watching might have suffered more.
From Mrs Huston’s Launceston Hotel, Jack Brown finally got down to writing a letter home to his parents, brother and sister. ‘As you can imagine,’ he scratched with his quill-pen, ‘we are all very happy now that we have won the final test match and what a match it was. The greatest match on record. The excitement was intense. We outplayed them at every point. When we had 297 to get to win and Brockwell was out at 6 (5 actually) and then Stoddart at 28 the betting men offered 5 to 1 against us. If I ever felt determined to do well I did when I heard the people say “It’s all over now”. I got 51 in 27 minuites (sic) and then the people began to think that “It was not all over yet” and it was not for Albert Ward and myself took the score to 238 before I was out. Of course you will have read all about the match before you recieve (sic) this letter but I am glad to say that everybody gave us great credit for winning. It was a glorious win one that we shall never forget. The gate reciepts (sic) were 4003£ so you me (may) guess what a lot of people saw the match. The cricketers out here are very good players indeed and take a lot of beating.’
Brown’s description of the voyage to Tasmania was less enthusiastic: ‘the ship rolled awfully and nearly everybody was bad’. He remarked on his recurring ill-health, saying that he was ‘very bad’ at the start of the final Test but recovered for the last two days, which was just as well for England. While having made many friends during the tour, he was now eager to get back to Yorkshire.
The three-day match in Launceston was drawn, Humphreys coming back onto the scene with 10 for 98, and being hit twice clean out of the ground by Russell Westbrook, ‘a typical Cornstalk, standing 6ft 4in in height, and extremely slim’. After a Sunday of rest, it was Stoddart’s 32nd birthday, and the local ladies did him proud with a cake, iced in team colours. The gossip columns still sprouted theories about the various cricketers’ romances, and also as to their livelihoods. ‘Stoddart and Philipson,’ speculated one paper, ‘are the only ones with any money at all, each possessing an income of five or six hundred a year. The former is a stockbroker in London, and the latter does nothing.’
Stoddart marked his birthday with a nice 73 not out, following Brockwell’s return to better touch with 69, but Briggs strained a leg and dropped out of the match, and when the players were warming up on the final morning, Brown was hit in ‘the lower part of the body’ and also had to withdraw from the game. The local XVIII batted out for a draw, finishing 219 for 13 wickets after being 113 behind on first innings.
A six-hour night-time rail journey through mountains lit by bushfires took the Englishmen to Hobart, and a wine reception with the mayor was held before play began against Fifteen of Southern Tasmania. Rain marred this visit. Not only was Mount Wellington shrouded in mist, spoiling the sightseeing, but lost playing time affected the finances of the venture, and, almost as bad as this, play was sometimes delayed because some of the English players, mainly the amateurs, were nowhere to be seen. It caused much adverse comment locally.
The first day was washed out; Stoddart then top-scored with 21 in his team’s moderate total of 91 (Charles Eady 5 for 60); and the local XV were 189 for 13 (Francis Ford 9 for 56, Sid Howe 51 not out, Eady 35), drawing a soggy match remembered with some bitterness by the Hobart cricket fraternity for the apparent aloofness of the visiting amateurs and for their seeming rudeness in absenting themselves from the official lunch. Two explanations followed: that Jim Phillips, the umpire, had telephoned the ground and ascertained that play would not be possible for some time; and that Stoddart had left a pair of his boots on the hot stove to dry out, remembered this as their carriage was well on its way to the ground, and turned back for fear of having the boots ruined. He actually agreed to play on through some rain—commenting later that batsmen could keep control of the bat only by placing a handkerchief around the handle—saying somebody would catch a cold. It was the captain himself unfortunately, who caught a heavy one, which developed into a chill.
This caused him to miss the match against Victoria, the team returning in SS Coogee to the mainland, Stoddart following direct from Hobart in Parramatta.
He was well enough to attend a farewell banquet at the MCG on the second evening of the Victoria match, when flags were draped all around the room, and 150 guests toasted Queen Victoria, the State Governor, and ‘Our Guests’. Mr Justice a’Beckett referred back to the thrilling final Test here, when he had watched ‘with much the same interest as a father watched his dearly beloved child through a serious illness’, and recalled how life in the courtroom was constantly disturbed as pieces of paper bearing the score were handed around. The country might still have to wait some time for federation, but ‘the federation of sport was an accomplished fact’.
Melbourne Cricket Club honorary life membership was conferred on each English amateur, and complimentary things were said about the behaviour of the professionals. Such was the acceptance of the times, the discrimination would hardly have been noticed, though one newspaper did express resentment that the ‘gentlemen’ players sat at the top table while the professionals were ‘stowed among the crowd’.
Greeted tumultuously, Andrew Ernest Stoddart stood and was eventually allowed to start his speech of thanks, which was delivered in his usual soft and kindly manner. He said all the right things, and singled out Major Wardill and Mr Sheridan, the representatives of the Melbourne and Sydney organisations, who had escorted the team like fathers and seen to all of its needs. He had greatly enjoyed his previous tours, with Lord Hawke’s team in 1887–88 and Lord Sheffield’s in 1891–92, but this surpassed them. He spoke well of the umpiring standards, and said how much he looked forward to Australia’s next visit to England. The cheering was almost incessant, the diners feeling good after their ‘Stoddart Pudding’ and imported and Australian wines.
Soon everyone was making speechlets: Johnny Briggs, MacLaren, Ford and Philipson, and some cricket-loving politicians, and there were songs and recitations before a halt was called at half-past-11.
The Stoddartless Stoddart’s XI lost the three-day match against Victoria, staged in an effort to boost the Victorian Cricket Association’s sagging receipts. Play took place on March 21, 22 and 25, the Saturday (23rd) being kept clear so as not to interfere with the race meeting at Flemington, which was a farewell to the departing Governor, Lord Hopetoun.
The attendance was low—under 3000 paying customers on each of the first two days, only 1000 on the third—because, it was assumed, there had been a surfeit of cricket, and feelings of gloom still hung in the air after Australia’s defeat in the decisive Test. Victoria’s victory should have had a cheering effect.
Harry Trott put the English XI in and took 8 for 63 in 24.5 overs with brisk legspin, packing the tourists away for 131. Ward and Brown, who had captured the last Melbourne Test with their stand of 210, now made five runs between them. MacLaren top-scored with 43, and Victoria took a big lead by making 269 in the perfect autumn weather (Bruce 42, Albert Trott 46, Charles McLeod 52, new boy Peryman 40), with stand-in English captain Philipson switching his bowling around but suffering mild anguish at the poor fielding.
When the Englishmen batted again, Alf Johns, Victoria’s new wicketkeeper, again made a good impression. But for Ford’s 85, which included a five off Trumble almost into the elms, England would not have averted an innings defeat. As it was, their 270 left Victoria needing 133, a target they reached with ease, Bruce hitting 72 not out, Albert Trott 44, after Lockwood’s dismal tour now saw him flooring a hot catch off Peel’s first ball to Bruce at the start.
That evening the touring cricketers were entertained at a dance in Prahran Town Hall, and then came the final leg of the tour which had begun six months earlier. They left Spencer Street station on the Adelaide express, with the departing Lord and Lady Hopetoun as fellow passengers.
Stoddart still did not feel well enough to take the field, so Hylton Philipson again led the side in the 23rd and final match of the tour. And it produced some fairly momentous performances before its conclusion on the fifth evening, good attendances having peaked at 7000 on the Saturday.
Less than a fortnight after his 18th birthday, Clem Hill, a left-hander who was to become one of the greatest of Australian batsmen, went in at No. 8 with South Australia’s score 124 for 6 and made 150 not out. He and Walter Giffen (81) put on 192 for the eighth wicket in 2¾ hours, and when the innings closed for 397, young Hill had been in for four hours, not only taking all that Richardson (5 for 148), Peel and the others could direct at him but cutting, pulling and driving them at every opportunity. It was an exquisite bonus for Australian cricket in the last gasps of the 1894–95 season, and it had the band mockingly playing ’E Dunno Where ‘E Are as one of the English fieldsmen—striding like a tired emu—chased laboriously after a drive into the longfield from which five runs were taken.
And then when the Englishmen batted, Hill kept wicket, Affie Jarvis having been extensively injured when thrown from his carriage on the way home after the opening day’s play. Hill wore the keeper’s gloves for a very long time too. Albert Ward saw out the second day, batted all through the third, and after the Sunday of rest, was out on the fourth day for 219, which was to remain the highest of his 29 first-class centuries. He had stands of 174 with Jack Brown (101) and 181 with FGJ Ford (106). Bobby Peel’s 57 helped bulk up the total to 609 in under eight hours, and George Giffen bowled very nearly half the overs to return figures of 87-12-309-5. This was the first instance of any bowler conceding anything near 300 runs in an innings, and Giffen, 36, was just the man to ‘achieve’ it. Not until Arthur Mailey’s famous 4 for 362 in 1926–27 was the record broken.
Hill went in at No. 5 in South Australia’s second innings and added a 56 to his unbeaten 150, heading the innings of 255 which left the Englishmen only 44 runs to win—though only 20 minutes’ play remained that day. Brockwell and Ford knocked them off in 17 minutes. That evened the score for their defeat in the opening match of the tour.
There remained one further major social occasion, Sir Edwin Smith, the Governor, entertaining both teams and a host of notables at The Acacias, and speech followed speech. Giffen was ‘very proud of Master Clem Hill’s grand performance’, and he expressed regret that ‘Stoddy’ had been forced to miss this last match. Major Wardill spoke with feeling, and said that when the English cricketers had gone it would leave a big blank in his life, such a splendid time had he had with them on tour. Songs followed, Stoddart having spoken for the last time, saying that in spite of his dislike for speechmaking, he regretted that this was the final effort on his part after such an enjoyable expedition. Again, he said all the right things.
The eight professionals in his troupe presented him with a silver tobacco jar, Johnny Briggs making a pleasant little address, Stoddart almost too choked to respond. The gift had been prompted, said Briggs, by feelings that ran even deeper than respect—feelings of love. Stoddart gave a diamond scarf-pin to each of his players. The tourists had indeed been a harmonious bunch.
And so ended the 1894–95 tour, which had generated such interest in Australia and England that Test cricket was now on a high plane, its ‘profile’ recognisable for the pattern of play, the intensity of competition, and the massive public interest which still envelops Ashes cricket. Such an elevation of stature might now seem inevitable. It was anything but that. Had the English team not played so attractively and been so genuinely popular, had Australia not fought back in the third and fourth Tests to set up the final cliffhanger, had not the series been projected at such cost, as never before, by the Pall Mall Gazette and other publications, the trough into which cricket—even international cricket—had settled might have been sustained and even deepened.
‘It has been left to Mr Stoddart and his companions,’ stated one editorial, ‘to take the Australian public by storm, and for at least four months to make cricket the question of the day. Politics local and Imperial, the war in the East, currency tangles and municipal corruption in the United States, diplomatic intriguing, with possibly grave complications resulting therefrom, have been cast into the shade. Nothing, in short, has been able to withstand the avalanche-like progress of the Stoddart combination.’
