How Australia's cricket team became the most successful in the sport
Australia won the very first Test match, at Melbourne in 1877, and has kept winning ever since. With 427 Test victories, six World Cup titles and a mock newspaper obituary that created the Ashes, the side has a strong claim to being the most successful national team cricket has produced.
That opening match against England ended in a 45-run win, with Charles Bannerman scoring the first Test century, 165. Games were rare because the sea voyage between the two countries took months, yet a much smaller nation held its own. At The Oval in 1882, Fred Spofforth's 7 for 44 stopped England chasing 85, and a London paper mourned English cricket, declaring the body cremated and its ashes carried off to Australia. The rivalry has burned ever since.
A golden age from the 1897–98 season to 1910–11 saw eight of ten tours won. Victor Trumper became a national hero before dying of kidney disease at 37 in 1915. Rows with the governing board led six leading players to boycott a 1912 tournament. After the war, Warwick Armstrong's side swept England 5–0 in 1920–21.
Then came Don Bradman. On the 1930 tour of England he piled up 974 runs, including 334 at Leeds, and he retired in 1948 with a Test average of 99.94, nearly 40 above anyone else; a duck in his final innings kept him below 100. England's bodyline tactics in 1932–33, fast short balls aimed at batters' bodies, nearly sparked a riot among 50,000 spectators in Adelaide and a diplomatic row, and the tactic was banned the next year.
Modern records are just as striking. Australia has reached eight World Cup finals and won six, including three in a row in 1999, 2003 and 2007, and went 34 World Cup games unbeaten until 2011. They also collected back-to-back Champions Trophies in 2006 and 2009, the 2021 T20 World Cup and the 2021–23 World Test Championship. Their 1,000th international win came against India in Sydney on 12 January 2019.
Source: Australia national cricket team
