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England v Australia 1928 : test cricket comes to Queensland By JOL Admin | 18 July 2013 The year 1928 saw the culmination of a long campaign to bring test cricket to Queensland. The admission of Queensland to the Sheffield Shield competition in 1926 had opened the door. International cricket had been played in Queensland since 1883 when an English touring side visited the state and played a match against the Queensland team but efforts to bring test cricket to Brisbane for the England tour of 1907-08 were unsuccessful. The facilities at the Brisbane Cricket Ground were not up to scratch and Queensland cricket authorities returned to the Exhibition Ground which had not been used for first-class cricket for some years. This move proved successful and on 30th November 1928, the first test of the series against England began at the Brisbane Exhibition Ground. The Brisbane Courier eagerly anticipated the first test. Supporters of cricket in Queensland have had their way after a long uphill fight, and Brisbane is to have a Test match. Two main reasons used to be advanced against holding one of the Tests in this city. The first was that the status of Queensland itself as a cricketing State did not warrant any change. That reason has lost weight, since Queensland now competes for the Sheffield Shield, and is recognised as a State of great cricketing possibilities. The other reason was that the wicket in Brisbane was not good enough for Test cricket. That objection also has been removed, for during the last visit of an English team to this city it was amply demonstrated that the wicket at the Exhibition Grounds could compare very favorably with the wickets in the South. Once a distinguished English cricketer opposed the holding of a Test in Brisbane "because Brisbane was too hot." Such an objection is not seriously raised nowadays, and we doubt whether that particular player was in earnest. There remains then for the success of Brisbane's first Test match only liberal patronage on the part of the public. There were no Queensland players in the starting eleven for Australia although local allrounder Ron Oxenham was the 12th man and took a catch to dismiss Sutcliff in the second innings. The side also included Victorian slow bowler Bert Ironmonger who was born in Queensland. Three Queensland players were featured in the other matches of the series. Otto Nothing, a medium-pace bowling allrounder played in the second test in Sydney. Ron Oxenham played in the last three tests and was joined in the last test in Melbourne by slow bowler Percy Hornibrook. This was the first time two Queenslanders had been on the Australian test team and both contributed to Australia's only winning performance of the series. Source: www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/england-v-australia-1928-test-cri...

Cricket was introduced in Papua New Guinea (PNG) by missionaries from the London Missionaries Society in the early 1900s. Initially, matches were not always played with strict rules, with teams fielding over fifty players a common occurrence. The game became very popular among the Papuan coastal villages where these missionaries and early British explorers first landed. There is still conjecture about where the first game of cricket was played, with Milne Bay, Oro, and Hanuabada the three (3) most likely areas where the first cricket match was played on the shores of PNG. Source: www.icc-cricket.com/about/members/east-asia-pacific/assoc...

In the past, matches were not always played to strict rules, with teams of more than fifty players a common occurrence. Cricket did not arrive in the Territory of New Guinea until Australia took over the administration of the territory under a United Nations mandate. Cricket in rural areas tended to be played mostly by the indigenous population, whilst in urban areas such as Port Moresby the game was played mostly by the British and Australian expatriate population, and competition for clubs in the city was started in 1937. A team of nine expatriates and two indigenous players played in Papua New Guinea's first international, against Australia in 1972. Since its beginnings cricket was picked up naturally in the Motuan areas of Papua New Guinea, most recognizably the village of Hanuabada. Hanuabada village is located in the outer suburbs of Port Moresby, where cricket is played every day by small children to their national stars, every afternoon the streets are flooded with boys playing cricket, this was also where the Liklik Kricket Competition was started in PNG. It may be for these reasons more than half of the PNG national cricket team is from Hanuabada village. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea_national_cricket_team

Thanks for sharing the History.