150 years ago, early on the afternoon of Saturday 24 December, two batsmen strode out to the middle of the Melbourne Cricket Ground to open the batting for Sydney University in the first inter-varsity match ever played in Australia. It was only sixteen years since the ground had first been used for cricket; only sixteen years since Sydney University had played its first match; only fourteen years since the Melbourne University Cricket Club had been formed.

Sydney’s Richard Teece, wearing a uniform that consisted of a white straw hat, a blue and gold sash and a nondescript shirt with red checks, faced the first ball from Melbourne’s Harry Jennings. It was Teece, an inveterate organiser, who had arranged the game during a visit to Melbourne earlier in the year. In England, Oxford and Cambridge had had begun their games at Lords in 1827 and it was Teece’s vision, drawing on England’s experience, that now established the two Australian Universities’ contests.

The match began on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day was a day of rest and religious observance, well appreciated by the Sydney players who had set out from Sydney on an arduous journey south earlier in the week. The game resumed on Boxing Day and concluded on 27 December.

 The Sydney team included four current or future first class players (Richard Teece, Monty Faithfull, Thomas Iceton and Joseph Coates) but the home side included seven Victorian representatives.

Scores, as was usual at the time, were relatively low but Sydney’s 109 was enough to give them a slender lead of two runs on the 1st innings.

Iceton, Faithfull and Coates scored 90 runs among them in the 2nd innings and Melbourne was set 130 to win.

“[Louis] Goldsmith made a rapid start, taking twenty runs from the first three overs of the innings, and his opening partnership with David Wilkie was worth 57 until Faithfull induced him into a skied drive. Faithfull grabbed two more wickets before stumps on the second day. On the final afternoon, Melbourne still needed 33 runs when its sixth wicket fell, but a vital stand of 30…settled the issue, even though Faithfull caused a late scare before a’Beckett hit the winning boundary.”

If you want to read a more comprehensive account of the game and the scores, what better resource than Bonnell and Rodgers’ ‘Golden Blues’, pp16-18.

But three other aspects of this momentous trip south 150 years ago bear re-telling.

Firstly, on the afternoon of 23 December, the two Universities contested the first Australian intervarsity boat race on the Yarra River over a distance of 3.5 miles. 1500 spectators crammed aboard steamers or lined the river banks and they saw Melbourne’s four man crew (of whom only DW Wilkie played in the subsequent cricket match) defeat Sydney’s all cricketing crew (EA Iceton, bow, E Barton, R Teece and Alan Yeomans, stroke) by four lengths.

Secondly, ‘E Barton’ was later Sir Edmund Barton, a brilliant scholar, a first class cricket umpire,  a successful politician who became the first Prime Minister of Australia (still the only member of the Sydney University Cricket Club to serve as Prime Minister of Australia), one of the first judges of the High Court of Australia. But, he was a dismally poor fieldsman and an indifferent batsman. Records of his matches for Sydney University are incomplete but in matches for which records survive, in 74 innings, he scored just 517 runs.

Thirdly, from that 1870 match, two cricket bats still survive.

One was presented to Monty Faithfull. His valiant efforts could not prevent Melbourne’s narrow victory but his captaincy, his 7 for 19 in Melbourne’s 2nd innings and his 37 in Sydney’s 2nd innings provoked generous admiration, expressed in the bat’s gold inscription:

“Presented to HM Faithfull esq by the MUCC, as a mark of appreciation of his splendid bowling in the Inter Varsity Match 1870.”

The bat had been long forgotten until, in 1956, the Sydney University Cricket Club’s President, Captain John Morris, ordered the University No1 Grandstand to be cleared out and Faithfull’s bat emerged from piles of rubble, with the inscription still intact.

The other bat was used by Richard Sly who batted at no8 in the 1870 match. Ten years ago, his great grandson, Terrey Johnson, presented this bat to the Club.

Both bats are currently held in the  Sydney Uni Sport and Fitness offices.

150 years ago this week, a tradition of friendly rivalry between Australia’s two oldest universities was established.

And for that, we should remember with fondness the Sydney pioneers:

Richard Teece

Edward Iceton

Thomas Iceton

Monty Faithfull

Alan Yeomans

Joseph Coates

Edmund Barton

Richard Sly

JJ Teece

John Thompson

GE Long

TJ Plomley (scorer) and TP Miller (umpire)

James Rodgers