The first win after following on: Sydney 1894
Australia made 586, enforced the follow-on, and looked to have the match won. Overnight rain turned the pitch, England made 437 second time round, and Australia were bowled out for 166 chasing 177, losing by 10 runs in the first instance of a side winning a Test after being made to follow on.
586
The first Test of England's 1894/95 tour of Australia began at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 14 December 1894, with Australia winning the toss and batting on what was, for the first two days, a fine, firm surface. What followed was one of the biggest innings totals seen in Test cricket to that point, and a match that would end so strangely that it changed how sides thought about the follow-on for generations afterwards.
Giffen and Gregory's double hundreds
The start had given no hint of what was coming. John Lyons and Harry Trott were both out cheaply, Lyons for 1 and Trott for 12, and Joe Darling fell without scoring soon after, Australia three down for 21. George Giffen made 161 and Syd Gregory 201, the two biggest innings of a total that grew and grew across two full days. Frank Iredale added 81, and lower down the order the wicketkeeper Jack Blackham made 74. Australia batted on and on, eventually all out for 586, a total that, with England still to bat twice, appeared to put the match beyond argument. Tests in this era were played to a finish, with no fixed number of days set in advance, so there was no clock working against Australia's batters as the total climbed; a side that got in against a tiring attack could simply keep going for as long as wickets allowed, and on this occasion Giffen and Gregory made the most of exactly that.
England follow on
England's reply fell well short. Albert Ward made 75 and Johnny Briggs 57, but nobody else passed 50, and England were bowled out for 325, 261 runs behind. With that margin comfortably clearing the minimum lead needed under the rules of the day, Australia's captain sent England back in rather than bat again himself, the conventional decision for a side that had just made 586 and saw no reason to give up the initiative.
The rain that changed the match
What happened next has been told and retold for more than a century. Heavy overnight rain fell on the Sydney pitch before England batted again, and under the hot sun the next day the surface turned sticky and spiteful, the kind of drying, rain-affected wicket that could make even ordinary bowling almost unplayable for short stretches. It was exactly the sort of pitch nobody wants to bat first on, yet it was Australia, not England, who would eventually have to bat on it when it was at its worst.
Ward and the second-innings recovery
Batting a second time still 261 behind, England were transformed. Archie MacLaren fell early, out for 20 with the score on 44, but Ward and Andrew Stoddart added 71 for the second wicket before Stoddart went for 36. Ward kept batting, adding 102 more with Jack Brown, and reached 117, his second fifty-plus score of the match turned into a century, before he was finally out with the score on 217. Bill Brockwell made 37 and Bobby Peel 17, and then Francis Ford and Johnny Briggs put together the innings' biggest late stand, 89 for the seventh wicket, Ford reaching 48 and Briggs 42 before both fell in the space of a few overs. England batted deep and well, adding 437 in their second innings, a total that turned a hopeless position into a genuine chance, and left Australia needing to bat last, at the point in the match when the pitch had turned hardest to play on.
177 to win
Australia needed 177 to win the match outright, a target that looked simple enough for a side that had made 586 only days earlier, but the pitch by then was offering the sort of turn and bounce that made batting a lottery. Joe Darling made 53 and George Giffen 41, and Australia reached 130 for 3 with the total climbing steadily, still the clear favourites. From there the innings folded: Australia lost their last seven wickets for 36 runs, and were bowled out for 166, handing England victory by 10 runs.
The tail that nearly saved it
Even after the top order had gone, the margin stayed agonisingly tight. George Giffen was out for 41 with the score on 135, five runs after Darling had fallen, and Frank Iredale added only 12 more before he too was out, at 147. Syd Gregory, who had made 201 in the first innings, could only manage 16 second time round before he was out at 158, and John Reedman followed at 159. From there the last pair of recognised partnerships went one run, then two, then three at a time: Charlie Turner out at 161, Ernie Jones at 162, and finally Jack Blackham, the wicketkeeper who had made 74 in the first innings, out at 166 with the last wicket to fall. Every one of the last seven batters managed only a handful of runs each, the same sticky pitch that had turned the match extracting a wicket every few overs almost until the target, so tantalisingly close, ran out.
The first of its kind
It remains one of the most retold turnarounds in the game's history precisely because of the scale of the total that was overturned: 586 is still among the biggest innings totals a side has managed and gone on to lose from. It was the first time in the history of Test cricket that a side had won a match after being forced to follow on, a result made possible only by the rain that fell between England's two innings and turned a hopeless position into a winning one. The feat would not be repeated until Headingley in 1981, when England, following on themselves, did the same thing to Australia, a match still remembered by Ian Botham's name. Sydney in 1894 remains the older and, in its own way, the stranger of the two stories: a side that had scored 586 and enforced the follow-on still finding a way to lose, undone not by the opposition's batting alone but by the weather that arrived overnight and changed the character of the pitch entirely.
The full scorecard for this match, innings by innings, is on this page, and both sides can be followed further on the Australia and England team pages. In The Follow-On you can send either XI in twice and see whether you can pull off what England managed at Sydney in 1894.
Sources
- CricArcade Test archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
- ESPNcricinfo: England in Australia 1894/95, first Test scorecard and report
- Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1896: the England tour of Australia