A Thing of Beauty
Archie Mac |Published: 2025
Pages: 389
Author: Armstrong, Geoff
Publisher: Stoke Hill Press
Rating: 4.5 stars
This is the second volume of A Thing of Beauty. Please see the review of volume one. We start volume two with the groundbreaking visit of Lord Sheffield’s team to Australia in 1891–92 and discover the aptly named Cricket Ground Secretary Sydney Fairland’s crucial role in the success of the tour. Three years later, the Trustees of the Association Cricket Ground are — in partnership with the Melbourne Cricket Club — for the first time directly involved in financing an Ashes tour of Australia. Both tours were an unqualified success (Lord Sheffield’s tour leading to the birth of the Sheffield Shield), both in re-establishing cricket as the number one sport in the country as well as a dividend bonanza. The other significant development, just prior to the tour of Andrew Stoddart’s team in 1894–95, was the name change to the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG).
Despite the success of the 1894-95 Ashes tour, the sporting landscape was changing in Sydney. This meant the Trustees could no longer rely just on cricket for their money to fund changes to the ground. Author Geoff Armstrong spends a few chapters tracing the importance of other sports to the development of the SCG. The two biggest draws in the 1890s were Rugby Union and bicycle racing.
In the end it was Union that became the major winter sport, beating off a challenge from what was often referred to as the ‘Melbourne game’, or Aussie Rules Football. With the Managing Trustee in Philip Sheridan being a fan of the ‘Melbourne game’ it seems it was only the inability of those in charge of Aussie Rules to take advantage of this significant relationship with Sheridan. By 1892, Union was the undisputed number one football code in NSW.
Apart from Aussie Rules, the other sport that should have been a challenge to Union was bicycle racing. The thing that stopped cycling from competing regularly with Union for ground time at the SCG in the late 1880s and early 1890s was the constant war between amateur and professional cyclists. The amateur NSW Cyclists’ Union was ruthless with long bans for any amateur even suspected of accepting a financial prize. The constant battle between professional and amateur saw infighting retard the sports development.
By the mid 1890s, more and more cyclists were turning professional, although Sydney was still far more conservative than Melbourne where professional cycling was dominant. In 1895 one of the world’s great sprinters in the American Arthur Zimmerman toured Australia and showed just what a sleeping giant cycling was in NSW, as demonstrated by the largest crowd to date showing up to watch the American at the SCG. This success inspired Sheridan to install a state of the art cycling track round the SCG oval to enable night meetings. It seems this created angst and some strange rules impacting the cricket. For example if the ball rolled onto the track it was considered a boundary, however the batsman was out if the fielder caught the ball while standing on the track.
After the success of the 1894-95 Ashes series, the Trustees’ were again involved with bringing out an Ashes tour in 1897-98, which in the end was even more successful from a financial point of view than the earlier tours in the 1890s. This success didn’t stop their old adversary the NSW Cricket Association from criticising their motives, and this time they had political support.
Due to the concerns raised by the NSW Cricket Association, that were basically the Trustees’ were not prioritising cricket and had no right to be involved in financing Ashes tours, the Government appointed two more Trustees. One of these was a NSW Cricket Association man. This increase in Trustees resulted in the disbandment of the longstanding Ground Committee, which, disappointingly, despite their years of unpaid work appears to have ended without a public acknowledgement.
While the first volume of A Thing of Beauty had Philip Sheridan as the main character, this second volume predominately features Ground Secretary Fairland, who seems to have had his fingers in more pies than a baker. The term indefatigable would be apt in describing Fairland, who was involved in everything from the ordering of monogrammed SCG towels to the printing of membership tickets to making the ground bookings. Fairland comes across as a loyal Lieutenant to Sheridan.
At the other end of the spectrum author Armstrong continues to follow the first family of Australian cricket, the Gregory family, through the patriarch SCG groundsman Ned Gregory. At one point Gregory receives a reduction in pay for being inebriated while on duty and on another occasion was forced to apologise to the Trustees’ due to his language. Despite these issues, the SCG owes Ned a huge debt. A jack of all trades, he was the ground’s inaugural curator, designed the scoreboard, which was described as a ‘marvel’, and even made repairs around the stadium.
In the end I am not sure which of the two volumes I enjoyed more, but it’s fair to say that both are fantastic reads and the two volumes are a seminal work.
The two volume set can be bought as a package for $110.00 or a single volume for $60.00, and are available from stokehillpress.com.
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