Ashes 1881/2
Betting scandals have been part of cricket from its earliest days, and it was in a match against Victoria before the first Test of the tour that they surfaced. There was very heavy betting on the match. Victoria needed 94 runs to win in the last innings when the tourists' boat was due to leave, meaning that the match would be a draw. The Victorians, anxious for a win, asked Shaw and Lillywhite to play out the game. They agreed, but only if the sailing of their boat was delayed till 7pm after the match; to their surprise, the boat company consented. However, there were rumours that two Englishmen had tried to throw the game. In response Shaw bet £1 on an England victory and made every other member of his team do likewise. Remarkably, the Victorians were bowled out for 75, leaving Shaw's side the winner by 18 runs. But the rumours of match-fixing did not go away: On the boat journey to Adelaide, Billy Midwinter, who is the only man to play Test cricket for England against Australia and Australia against England, made accusations that led to a scuffle with the two men believed to have been implicated. Discretion from those reporting the tour means that the names of the alleged match-fixers cannot be identified with any certainty, but it was suggested that one of the players had dropped the simplest of catches, the other taken a catch only after the ball got into his shirtsleeve and became stuck.
Author
Topic: Mervyn Westfield (Read 2916 times)