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The Sydney Riot of 1879 was a civil disorder that occurred at an early international cricket match. It took place in Sydney, Australia, at the Association Ground, Moore Park, now known as the Sydney Cricket Ground, during a match between a touring English team captained by Lord Harris and New South Wales, led by Dave Gregory, who was also the captain of Australia. The riot was sparked by a controversial umpiring decision, when star Australian batsman Billy Murdoch was given out by George Coulthard, a Victorian employed by the Englishmen. The dismissal caused an uproar among the parochial spectators, many of whom surged onto the pitch and assaulted Coulthard and some English players. It was alleged that illegal gamblers in the New South Wales pavilion, who had bet heavily on the home side, encouraged the riot because the tourists were in a dominant position and looked set to win. Another theory given to explain the anger was that of intercolonial rivalry, that the New South Wales crowd objected to what they perceived to be a slight from a Victorian umpire. The pitch invasion occurred while Gregory halted the match by not sending out a replacement for Murdoch. The New South Wales skipper called on Lord Harris to remove umpire Coulthard, whom he considered to be inept or biased, but his English counterpart declined. The other umpire, Edmund Barton, defended Coulthard and Lord Harris, saying that the decision against Murdoch was correct and that the English had conducted themselves appropriately. Eventually, Gregory agreed to resume the match without the removal of Coulthard. However, the crowd continued to disrupt proceedings, and play was abandoned for the day. Upon resumption after the Sunday rest day, Lord Harris's men won convincingly by an innings. In the immediate aftermath of the riot, the England team cancelled the remaining games they were scheduled to play in Sydney. The incident also caused much press comment in England and Australia. In Australia, the newspapers were united in condemning the unrest, viewing the chaos as a national humiliation and a public relations disaster. An open letter by Lord Harris about the incident was later published in English newspapers, and caused fresh outrage in New South Wales when it was reprinted by the Australian newspapers. A defensive letter written in response by the New South Wales Cricket Association further damaged relations. The affair led to a breakdown of goodwill that threatened the future of Anglo-Australian cricket relations. However, friction between the cricketing authorities finally eased when Lord Harris agreed to lead an England representative side at The Oval in London against the touring Australians in 1880; this match became the fourth-ever Test and cemented the tradition of Anglo-Australian Test matches. ==Background== England cricket tours to Australia started in 1861,〔Pollard, p. 116.〕 and while successful, were still in their infancy in 1879, despite the first Test match being played in 1877. The teams were of variable quality; while promoters sought the best cricketers, they still had to agree to terms.〔Pollard, pp. 116, 126–128.〕 In addition, many could not afford the time for the long boat trip, the tour itself, and the return voyage—the journey itself often took up to two months.〔Pollard, pp. 128, 165.〕 Aside from a tour by an Australian Aboriginal team in 1868, the Dave Gregory-led campaign in 1878 was the first major Australian tour to England.〔Pollard, pp. 198–199.〕 The tour was generally regarded as a success;〔 a highlight was the Australians' famous victory over a very strong Marylebone Cricket Club outfit, which included W. G. Grace, the dominant cricketer of the 19th century, in less than four hours.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Marylebone Cricket Club v Australians )〕〔Pollard, pp. 200–201.〕 Keen to make the most of this success, the Melbourne Cricket Club—the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket was not created until 1905 —〔Haigh and Frith, foreword.〕 invited Lord Harris, an eminent amateur cricketer of the time, to lead a team to Australia.〔Birley, p. 128.〕〔 The team was originally meant to be entirely amateur, but two professional Yorkshire bowlers, George Ulyett and Tom Emmett, joined the tour team after two Middlesex players had to withdraw due to a bereavement.〔 The main distinction between amateurs and professionals was social status, and although amateurs were not paid for playing, they did receive generous "expenses" which usually exceeded anything they would have been paid as professionals.〔Birley, pp. 99–107.〕 Despite the presence of two professionals in the team, the Englishmen were described as "Gentlemen", a euphemism for amateurs.〔Pollard, p. 217.〕 Now that Ulyett and Emmett were in the team, they did a large part of the bowling, and commentators felt that Harris had overworked them.〔Pollard, p. 220.〕 At the time, English cricket was dominated by amateurs. These scions of the ruling class were generally educated in elite sandstone private establishments (ironically called "public schools"), such as Harrow and Eton, and universities of the establishment such as Oxford and Cambridge, and to them, sport was a social leisure pursuit.〔Birley, pp. 16–18, 52–55, 88–94.〕 In contrast, the Australians were regarded—by the social standards of the 19th century—as coarse, rowdy and uncultured.〔Sharp, p. 135.〕〔 The likes of bushranger Ned Kelly heightened perceptions that Australia had a bandit culture.〔Pollard, p. 218.〕 Violence, heckling and abusive chanting among drunken spectators and gamblers at sporting grounds were commonplace in 19th century Australia,〔Sharp, pp. 139–141.〕 and the prevalence of betting was seen as a major cause of crowd unrest.〔Sharp, pp. 143–145.〕 There were many instances of concerning player behaviour during the 1878 tour of England, and Gregory's men were considered to be unrefined and raucous.〔Harte, pp. 105–109.〕 Cheating was a regular occurrence in 19th-century Australian cricket,〔Cashman (1992), pp. 5–19.〕 and the inter-colonial rivalry was strong—the modern states of Australia were separate colonies until their federation in 1901.〔Davison, Hirst and Macintyre, pp. 243–244.〕 As in real life, the sporting rivalry was at its most bitter between the two most populous and politically powerful colonies, New South Wales and Victoria.〔Davison, Hirst and Macintyre, pp. 464–465, 662–663.〕 The endless dispute between the colonies over whether Sydney or Melbourne would be the capital of Australia eventually forced the compromise that saw the construction of Canberra mid-way between the two cities.〔Fitzgerald, pp. 80–92.〕〔Wigmore, pp. 20–24.〕〔Davison, Hirst and Macintyre, pp. 108.〕 With regards to sport, cricket administrators from both colonies sought to undermine their cross-border counterparts.〔Haigh and Frith, p. 16.〕 On the field, matches were dominated by tit-for-tat throwing wars. Both colonies sought to stack their teams with players who either had borderline—and sometimes flagrantly—illegal bowling actions to use physical intimidation as a means of negating opposition batsmen.〔 Gregory, whose action was regarded as highly dubious,〔Whimpress, pp. 28, 33.〕 was prominent in his New South Wales team pursuing a policy of condoning illegal bowling.〔Whimpress, pp. 24–34.〕 It was amidst a background of inter-colonial rancour and a belligerent Australian sports culture that the riot broke out.〔 Soon after Gregory's 1878 Australian team returned home, Lord Harris's Englishmen arrived.〔〔Harte, pp. 107–108.〕 Australia won the first match, played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, by 10 wickets.〔 The match was later recognised as the third Test match in history.〔Harte, p. 109.〕 New South Wales paceman Fred Spofforth—nicknamed "The Demon" because of his ferocious pace—took 13 wickets in the match,〔Cashman (1997), p. 283.〕 including the first ever Test hat-trick.〔Cashman (1997), p. 284.〕 The next tour match was against New South Wales and started on 24 January at the Association Ground in Sydney. New South Wales won by five wickets,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Lord Harris' XI in Australia, 1878/79 – New South Wales v Lord Harris' XI, Sydney Cricket Ground – 24, 25, 27, 28 January 1879 )〕 despite the absence of Spofforth—who withdrew from the home side after spraining his wrist the night before the start of the match—〔〔Cashman (1990), p. 98.〕 and Gregory, who had been dropped for missing a training session and failing to provide an explanation for his absence.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sydney Riot of 1879」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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