Stoddy’s Mission: The First Great Test Series 1894-1895

This is the story of the First Great Test Series between Australia and England. AE Stoddart and his team sailed to Australia late in 1894 and played five sensational Test matches against Australia. With the teams level at 2-all before the decisive Melbourne Test in March 1895, public interest was frantic. Without the benefit of television or radio broadcasts, cricket-lovers in Melbourne crowded outside the offices of the Argus and Australasian as they tried to catch a glimpse of the score on the progress board. It’s said that even Queen Victoria demanded to be kept up to date with events during the ‘match of the century’.

No cricket tour book has been delayed as long as this one (just on 100 years) and no Test series has better deserved a chronicle in book form. Highly-respected cricket author and magazine editor David Frith brings back vividly the action in those five Tests and the personalities of the Australian and English cricketers who made them so exciting. Widely acknowledged as one of the game’s leading researchers and historians, David Frith is also a fine writer, and the result is a book which recaptures the freshness of a memorable tour as though it took place only yesterday.