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The incredible tale behind Don Bradman's most uncomfortable dismissal: World's greatest batsman drops to the pitch after a ball from 'the fastest bowler he ever faced' - but racism means you've probably NEVER heard of him. * Harold Edward Gilbert was born on an Aboriginal reserve in Queensland in 1905 * He grew up in another Aboriginal settlement where he learned how to play cricket * Gilbert was picked as a bowler for the Queensland Sheffield Shield team in 1930 * He dismissed Donald Bradman, the world's greatest batsman, for a duck in 1931 * Bradman described the right-armer Gilbert as the fastest bowler he ever faced * Gilbert, who never played for Australia, died at 71 in a mental institution in 1978. Eddie Gilbert was the fastest bowler Don Bradman ever faced - an Aboriginal cricketer Australia rejected for national selection and then completely forgot. Gilbert, who once sat Bradman on his backside and knocked the bat out of his hand, was only the third man to dismiss The Don for a duck in first-class cricket. The little Queenslander was suggested as a counter to England's ferocious Bodyline bowling attack in 1932-33 but he never played a Test. Bradman said Gilbert was faster than Harold Larwood, who terrorized Australia during that series with short-pitched bowling aimed at the leg stump. Others have said Gilbert was even quicker than Australian tearaway Jeff Thomson and West Indian great Andy Roberts in the 1970s. Taken from his parents while still an infant, Gilbert found fame as a first-class cricketer at a time some of his teammates would not even speak to him. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6591805/How-Aboriginal-b...

The founding mother of women's cricket in Australia was the young Tasmanian, Lily Poulett-Harris, who captained the Oyster Cove team in the league she created in 1894. Lily's obituary, from her death a few years later in 1897, states that her team was almost certainly the first to be formed in the colonies. During the 1890s, cricket and rowing were two of the most popular competitive sports for women in Australia.[1] Another of the first all-women's sports clubs founded in Australia was the Rockhampton Ladies' Club. They were fielding a women's cricket team in the mid-1890s. The team wore dresses with long skirts and long sleeves, sashes attached to their uniform, tight belts and straw boater hats.[2] Source: wikidocumentaries-demo.wmflabs.org/Q8031138?language=en

How women created cricket history and influenced today's game "It's interesting how many firsts are associated in cricket with the women's game," Mr. Wells told 702 ABC Sydney's, Dominic Knight. "One of them is that women invented round-arm bowling and they did this out of sheer necessity because of their crinoline skirts. "They couldn't bowl underarm in the early 1800s like the rest of the men were because they simply couldn't negotiate the width of their skirts." According to Mr. Wells, a woman by the name of Christina Wiles, of Kent, in 1807 bowled round-arm deliveries to her brother, starting a specific style that would overtake the underarm bowling style which dominated. "They discovered that, in doing that, they could get a bit more purchase on the ball, and they could make the ball move off the wicket, and so the men copied them." Mr. Wells said while cricket had often been viewed as a male-dominated sport, it was the men who had followed in the footsteps of female pioneers on the pitch. "Cricket was seen as a game of Empire and it was seen as something that had been sanctioned by the aristocracy in England, so the fact that women played was seen quite happily alongside the male game," he said. "Their mode of dress though didn't really allow them to excel themselves and, in fact, in many ways that stayed the case right through until the 1970s." While the dress code at the time hampered the sporting range and mobility for women, Mr. Wells said advances in the sport had allowed for a more equal playing field today. "These days the women wear pretty much what the men wear and they're equally athletic and equally proficient at the game because of it." Source: www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-08/140-years-of-women-playing...

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...