Brendan Doggett appears an unremarkable cricketer on the surface.
He is a 31-year-old pacer from Australia, making his Test debut tomorrow; only thanks to the absence of both Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.
Doggett averages around 26.5 with the ball in first-class cricket for his 190 wickets. Solid and reliable perhaps, but nothing that would excite record-keepers.
He traces his heritage to the Worimi tribe of eastern New South Wales, and will form one-half of the first pair of Indigenous cricketers – alongside Scott Boland – to play in the same Australian Test XI.
For the uninitiated, Indigenous (or First Nations) people were the first occupants of modern-day Australia, before their population nosedived in the 19th century with the arrival of British colonisation. Infectious diseases from Europe, as well as massacres and armed conflicts all played their part, as did the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their homes later in the 20th century, to assimilate into white society (the Stolen Generations).
Before Doggett, four Indigenous people have played Test cricket for Australia, 0.6 per cent of the 656 to do so in all (his debut will bump that up to 0.76). Australia’s 2021 census estimated that Indigenous people made up 3.8 per cent of the population. They have been significantly under-represented in this field.
The famous four…
Faith Thomas
Remarkably, Australia’s first Indigenous Test cricketer came in the women’s game – remarkable since she not only had to overcome race but also gender. Thomas was born as Tinnipha, to a mother from the Adnyamathanha tribe, and given the name Faith Coulthard.
Read more: Faith Thomas: The first Indigenous Australian to play Test cricket
She played her solitary Test in 1958 under the name Coulthard, also becoming the first Indigenous woman to represent Australia in any sport. Though she did not take a wicket, Thomas was renowned in Australian club cricket for her pace, and ability to bowl the yorker. She was picked for subsequent Test matches, but declined the call-ups to focus on her nursing career instead.
Thomas played her final club game in the 1960s, when she was eight months pregnant.
Since 2021, the Adelaide Strikers and Perth Scorchers in the Women’s Big Bash League compete for the annual Aunty Faith Thomas Trophy, named in her honour.
Jason Gillespie
Perhaps the most well-known of the four, seam bowler Gillespie is also the most-capped with 71. He also played 97 ODIs for Australia. The eldest of three siblings, his mother has Greek heritage. But Gillespie’s father’s side descended from the Kamilaroi Indigenous people.
By his own admission, he himself never paid much attention to his heritage until it became public knowledge. In 2003, he did speculate that previous Australian men’s Test cricketers may have had Indigenous heritage without knowing it: “Technically, I guess, I'm the first [player with Aboriginal heritage to play Test cricket].
“But I think there'd be a lot of former Test players with Indigenous blood and just didn't know about it. There have been 385 guys [to] play Tests. I'm sure I'm not the only one.”
Like in the case of Thomas, the Adelaide Strikers and Perth Scorchers men’s Big Bash League teams play for the Jason Gillespie Trophy every year.
Ash Gardner
Unlike Gillespie, who neither kept his heritage secret nor wore it proudly on his sleeve, current Australia all-rounder Ash Gardner has been more vocal and visible in her support for Indigenous people, having descended from the Muruwari people: “My culture is my identity, and I’ve always been really proud to give people a greater understanding of what my culture is about – its history, and how amazing and resilient our people are.”
Gardner spoke in 2021 about rediscovering the connection with her heritage during the Covid-19 lockdown. In 2023, she set up the Ashleigh Gardner Foundation, which aims to “increase the percentage of Aboriginal kids finishing high school.”
This came not long after she criticised Cricket Australia’s scheduling of a T20I game on ‘Australia Day’ (January 26), a date which marks the arrival of the British First Fleet to settle in Australia, in 1788.
“For those who don't have a good understanding of what that day means [for Indigenous people] it was the beginning of genocide, massacres and dispossession,” she said. In response, Cricket Australia said the match would be used as “an opportunity to continue our ongoing education journey with First Nations people.”
Scott Boland
Seam bowler Boland is familiar to England fans, thanks to his stunning Boxing Day debut in 2021. His 6-7 ripped through the tourists at the MCG in the third Ashes Test, and bowled Australia to an innings win. Since then, Boland has been the default backup to Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc.
Boland is 36 now, and was only in his mid-twenties when his family discovered that his maternal grandfather John Edwards, who was adopted, was a member of the Gulidjan tribe of the Colac area, south-west of Melbourne.
Since then, the Victoria quick has played for Australia’s Indigenous side, and alongside Doggett, went on a 2018 tour of England with the team that marked the 150-year anniversary of a particularly significant tour.
… and those that came before
In 1868, an Aboriginal XI created by Victoria captain Tom Wills, financed by Sydney lawyer George Graham and captained by Englishman Charles Lawrence who also played for Surrey and New South Wales, set sail for England.
This was the first representative Australian cricket team to visit another country, and only the third from anywhere. English teams had earlier travelled to the United States and Canada in 1859, and Australia in the early 1860s.
London newspaper The Sporting Life published a guide to the names of the Aboriginal cricketers. As was the practice at the time, they were given Anglicised monikers as substitutes for their native ones, which were difficult for the English to pronounce.
The Indigenous team arrived in England in May 1868, and played 47 matches in all during a gruelling six months in England. They won and lost 14 matches each, and drew 19; a result that was surprisingly good in the eyes of most.
As far as official records are concerned, these matches were not accorded Test, or even first-class, status. In 2010, however, Cricket Australia assigned the players cap numbers one through 14.
In Cricket Walkabout: the Australian Aborigines in England, John Mulvaney and Rex Harcourt present balance sheets from the tour which show that the team’s travel, accommodation and meals were paid for. It remains unclear whether or not the players were paid some form of match fees or weekly wages.
They also conclude that overt racial tensions in England – by the standards of the era – also appeared hearteningly scarce: “The sheer ignorance of local communities was a reality, but familiarity with the team soon bred comradeship rather than contempt.”
One of the stars of the tour, perhaps expectedly, was the captain Lawrence whose record read 1,156 runs and 257 wickets.
Less anticipated was the all-round brilliance of Unaarrimin (“Johnny Mullagh”), who outscored Lawrence by over 500 runs (1,698) and also had 257 scalps to his name, averaging 23 and 10 respectively (remember, this was a very different era of cricket).
The Edgar family of Pine Hills were among the benefactors of the Indigenous cricketers. Mulvaney and Harcourt cite the family as noting that one of Mullagh’s favourite shots was “... somewhat unorthodox.
“Dropping on one knee to a fast rising ball, he would hold the bat over his shoulder and parallel to the ground. The ball would touch the blade and shoot high over the wicket-keeper’s head to the boundary.”
It appears Mullagh was playing a version of the “upper cut” even before Test cricket itself came into being, and certainly long before Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag made it a trademark of their batting, or the likes of Douglas Marillier, Tillakaratne Dilshan and AB de Villiers began to regularly access the area of the ground behind the wicket.
Mullagh later earned places with Harrow in England, and the Melbourne Cricket Club in Australia, as a professional player. He also played first-class cricket, becoming only the second Indigenous player to do so after Murrumgunarriman (“Twopenny”). Since 2020, the Player of the Match in the traditional Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground is awarded the Johnny Mullagh medal.
Not all the cricketers were as fortunate; Bripumyarrimin (“King Cole”) passed away from tuberculosis in June, just over a month into the tour, while Ballrin (“Sundown”) and Jallachniurrimin (“Jim Crow”) fell ill and had to be sent home early, in August.
The 1868 team paved the way for three of the more notable Indigenous first-class cricketers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; fast bowlers Jack Marsh (New South Wales), Albert Henry and Eddie Gilbert (both Queensland).
All three were dogged by controversy over the legality of their actions but foul play was often suspected, at least in part due to their race. Marsh and Gilbert in particular were thought to have been denied selection to the Australian Test team on account of this as well.
Gilbert was part of the Stolen Generations, taken from his family at the age of three. He lived on the Barambah Aboriginal Reserve, and restricted by the Protection of Aboriginals Act of 1897, required written permission from the Queensland government every time he had to travel for a first-class match.
He was perhaps instrumental to England, as his terrific dismissal of Don Bradman for a five-ball duck in a 1931 Sheffield Shield game is said to have further fed Douglas Jardine’s theory of Bradman being vulnerable to high pace. The following summer saw the famous ‘Bodyline’ series. Bradman later admitted, in Farewell to Cricket, that those five balls from Gilbert “were unhesitatingly faster than anything seen from [Harold] Larwood or anyone else.”
However, he did not advocate for Gilbert’s inclusion in the Test side the following summer, presumably because, as he wrote, “... without wishing to castigate the umpires, the players all thought his action decidedly suspect.”
But ever since Gilbert, and Edna Crouch and Mabel Campbell around the same era, the proverbial trail of Indigenous cricketers even at first-class level goes cold. “And so the great whiteness set in,” wrote Geoff Lemon in the 2018 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
Queensland cricket retains records of Ian King (one season) and Michael Mainhardt (two) post-World War II, as well as Debbie Walford, Denise Marsh and Pat Fraser for the women’s team in the 1990s.
The 2018 commemoration of the 1868 tour was in line with a wider movement in Australian society this century, to acknowledge historical injustices inflicted upon the First Nations people. In 2008, the Parliament of Australia issued a formal apology for the Stolen Generations and in 2021, the lyrics of the national anthem underwent a change aimed at recognising the legacy of Indigenous Australians – part of the country long before the European settlers arrived.
None of this weight of history is Doggett’s to bear; rather, it is that of Australian cricket. But now when he and Boland step out at Perth, it will mark a new chapter in the sport. One can only hope it is only the start of more to come.
Follow Wisden for all cricket updates, including live scores, match stats, quizzes and more. Stay up to date with the latest cricket news, player updates, team standings, match highlights, video analysis and live match odds.
