The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as The 'G, is a sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadium in the Southern Hemisphere, the 11th largest globally, and the second-largest cricket arena by capacity. The MCG is within walking distance of the Melbourne CBD and is served by Richmond and Jolimont railway stations, as well as the route 70, 75 and 48 trams. It is adjacent to Melbourne Park and is an integral part of the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct.
The Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Demons or colloquially the Dees, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier competition and plays its home games at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
The sport of cricket has a known history beginning in the late 16th century England. It became an established sport in the country in the 18th century and developed globally in the 19th and 20th centuries. International matches have been played since the 19th-century and formal Test cricket matches are considered to date from 1877. Cricket is the world's second most popular spectator sport, after association football (soccer).
Thomas Wentworth Wills was an Australian sportsman who is credited with being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the British penal colony of New South Wales to a wealthy family descended from convicts, Wills grew up in the bush on stations owned by his father, the squatter and politician Horatio Wills, in what is now the state of Victoria. As a child, he befriended local Aboriginal people, learning their language and customs. Aged 14, Wills went to England to attend Rugby School, where he became captain of its cricket team and played an early version of rugby football. After Rugby, Wills represented Cambridge University in the annual cricket match against Oxford, and played at first-class level for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club. An athletic bowling all-rounder with tactical nous, he was regarded as one of the finest young cricketers in England.
The 1906 VFL season was the tenth season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured eight clubs and ran from 5 May to 22 September, comprising a 17-match home-and-away season followed by a two-week finals series featuring the top four clubs.
Andrew Ernest Stoddart was an English sportsman who played international cricket for England, and rugby union for England and the British Isles. He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1893.
Sir George Oswald Browning "Gubby" Allen CBE was a cricketer who captained England in eleven Test matches. In first-class matches, he played for Middlesex and Cambridge University. A fast bowler and hard-hitting lower-order batsman, Allen later became an influential cricket administrator who held key positions in the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which effectively ruled English cricket at the time; he also served as chairman of the England selectors.
George Coulthard was an Australian cricketer, umpire and Australian rules footballer.
Hugh Trumble was an Australian cricketer who played 32 Test matches as a bowling all-rounder between 1890 and 1904. He captained the Australian team in two Tests, winning both. Trumble took 141 wickets in Test cricket—a world record at the time of his retirement—at an average of 21.78 runs per wicket. He is one of only four bowlers to twice take a hat-trick in Test cricket. Observers in Trumble's day, including the authoritative Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, regarded him as ranking among the great Australian bowlers of the Golden Age of cricket. He was named as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1897 and the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame, established in 1996, inducted him in 2004.
George Henry Stevens Trott was an Australian cricketer who played 24 Test matches as an all-rounder between 1888 and 1898. Although Trott was a versatile batsman, spin bowler and outstanding fielder, "it is as a captain that he is best remembered, an understanding judge of human nature". After a period of some instability and ill discipline in Australian cricket, he was the first in a succession of assertive Australian captains that included Joe Darling, Monty Noble and Clem Hill, who restored the prestige of the Test team. Respected by teammates and opponents alike for his cricketing judgement, Trott was quick to pick up a weakness in opponents. A right-handed batsman, he was known for his sound defence and vigorous hitting. His slow leg-spin bowling was often able to deceive batsmen through subtle variations of pace and flight, but allowed opposition batsmen to score quickly.
William Bruce was an Australian cricketer who played in 14 Test matches between 1885 and 1895. He became a lawyer, practising in Melbourne.
In Australia, baseball is a game that is played in all states and territories of the country.
Craig Edwin Bradley is a former Australian rules footballer and first-class cricketer. He is the games record holder at Carlton in the AFL/VFL, and in elite Australian rules football.
John Walter Rutherford was an Australian cricketer who played in one Test match in 1956. Although Ernest Bromley was the first Western Australian to play Test cricket, Rutherford was the first player from the Western Australia cricket team to be picked for a senior cricket tour and the first to win a Test cap for Australia whilst playing for his native state.
James Archibald "Snowy" Atkinson was an Australian rules footballer and first class cricketer.
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field, at the centre of which is a 22-yard pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. Two players from the batting team, the striker and nonstriker, stand in front of either wicket holding bats, while one player from the fielding team, the bowler, bowls the ball toward the striker's wicket from the opposite end of the pitch. The striker's goal is to hit the bowled ball with the bat and then switch places with the nonstriker, with the batting team scoring one run for each of these exchanges. Runs are also scored when the ball reaches the boundary of the field or when the ball is bowled illegally.
Denis Cotter was an Australian cricketer. He played three first-class cricket matches for Victoria between 1887 and 1889. He also played in baseball games with the Melbourne Baseball Club, acting as a catcher for William Bruce.
Joseph Francis Wilson was an Australian sportsman who was prominent during the late 19th century. Originally from Launceston, Tasmania, he was educated at Launceston Grammar School and played Australian rules football and cricket for the school's firsts aged only 15. In addition to his school sports, Wilson played football for the Launceston Football Club in the Northern Tasmanian Football Association (NTFA) and cricket for several senior Launceston clubs. He established himself as one of Launceston's best all-round sportsmen by the time he completed high school; he was a prominent member of Launceston Football Club's consecutive NTFA premiership teams of 1888 and 1889, and he regularly represented Northern Tasmania in cricket and football.
On 11 and 12 February 1851, teams from Van Diemen's Land and Port Phillip District played the first cricket match between two Australian colonies, recognised in later years as the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia. It took place at the Launceston Racecourse, known now as the NTCA Ground, in Tasmania. The match was incorporated into celebrations marking the separation of the Port Phillip District from New South Wales in 1851 as the colony of Victoria.
The Spalding World Tour was an exhibition baseball tournament that circumnavigated the globe from in October 1888 to April 1889. Financed by former player and sporting goods executive Albert Spalding, the tour – composed of Spalding's own Chicago White Stockings and a team of "All-Americans" – travelled to Australia, Egypt, Italy, France, England, Ireland and the United States.
