The Spin | England´s first Test tour: death, brawling, betting and cross-dressing
(The Guardian Sports News)

The team´s trip for a 1-1 draw with Australia involved an arduous trek across the globe and came with scandal and drama aplentyEngland´s 500th Test match on foreign soil, which concluded in Port Elizabeth on Monday, prompted a lot of people to reminisce about tours past, but few could hope to match the tale of England´s voyage to their first ever away Test, played in Melbourne in March 1877. It is a tale of death, drama, donkeys and cross-dressing, and was thankfully diarised in sometimes excruciating detail by an unnamed player in a series of letters to the Sporting Life.In all 255 days passed between the players setting sail from Southampton and their return to London´s Charing Cross station. The correspondent details every day of the outbound trip. Along the way they stopped at Gibraltar, Malta (`the beggars and guides are a perfect nuisance, pestering you the whole time`), Port Said and Suez at either end of the Suez Canal (`Suez is a wretched town. No pleasure can be got by a visit to the place, which is a tumble-down, narrow-streeted, stinking hole`), Yemen and Galle, before the players switched boats for the leg to King George´s Sound. Continue reading...