History
AJ Hunting and Australia’s first one-day cricket match
CHRIS CURRIE opens up the State Library of Queensland collections to discover that one-day cricket initially was a hit when it began decades before the modern version.
We all know summer in Queensland means the bright lights and big hits of limited-overs cricket.
But did you know Australia’s first one-day cricket match was played at the Ekka grounds way back in 1933?
Cricket in 1930s Queensland was unquestionably popular and a strictly amateur (unpaid) sport – a colonial inheritance of the so-called ‘gentleman’s game’. Despite its relative success, one man believed more could be done to make it more attractive to the public and to players: relentless entrepreneur and inventor Albert John ‘AJ’ Hunting.
In June 1933, following a decline in his once wildly successful speedway racing enterprises, Hunting proposed a series of local matches between professional (paid) cricket teams over three hours on Saturday afternoons at the Brisbane Exhibition Grounds.
Pages of his diary – part of an extensive collection of his personal papers held at State Library – reveal his early thoughts, after watching the 1933 Brisbane Test match between Australia and England: “Just imagine going to a talkie and finding it 20% silent or worse, for such were the recent Tests … one over out of four a ‘dud’ [or] ‘maiden’ from the general public’s point of view. Hundreds of players in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne … etc are ready to adopt the new style of cricket, believing that it is what the public want and they are prepared to join it.”
Hunting’s vision included four innings of “vigorous and snappy cricket” being completed by two teams within a three-hour period, with a merit-based payment system for players, including two pounds for every six hit, and 7 shillings sixpence for bowlers who could rattle a batsman’s stumps. He formed a company, Professional One Day Cricket Limited, promising “brighter cricket at any cost” and secured a month’s lease at the Brisbane Exhibition Grounds.
Hunting received vigorous and immediate opposition from the Queensland Cricket Association (QCA), with the representative body stating that any players choosing to join Hunting’s league would be immediately banned from all other forms of cricket.
Nonetheless, two teams were signed and Australia’s first game of ‘Professional One-Day Cricket’ began on Saturday, October 7, 1933, with the players wearing numbers on their backs and batsmen under strict instruction to hurry onto and off the field after every 10 balls faced.
Between 800 and 1000 spectators were reported to have enjoyed an “afternoon of entertaining, if not altogether scientific cricket”, with over 500 runs scored in 200 minutes, including 39 fours and one memorable six (with Hunting, himself, marching out onto the pitch to present the batsman with a 10 shilling note).
As it turned out, this payment was the only one made to any ‘Professional One Day Cricket’ player. By the end of November, the new league was all but finished. Crowds were down to “less than twenty”, and Hunting’s dream was “dead, leaving few mourners except the participants on whom still rests the ban of the QCA”. Once sure the flashy competition had been thoroughly seen off, the QCA lifted its ban on the ‘professional’ players on Tuesday, July 3, 1934.
But Hunting’s foray into the cricketing world put him well ahead of his time.
More stories at slq.qld.gov.au/blog
