Foxes Flashback - First Victory over a Test Team

First Victory over a Test Team  (10^th July 1967)

Matches against touring teams generally created a great deal of interest. The match against Leicestershire was normally played early on in the season, following the match at Worcester, as much as anything to give the touring team a ‘gentle’ start, even though the weather was often freezing cold.

Leicestershire had been playing visiting teams since the beginning. The Australians came and won on their first visit to Grace Road in 1878, before the present club was established. They returned in 1880, the year of the first test match in England and also in that year Leicestershire showed enterprise by playing the Gentlemen of Canada. During the game the Canadian captain, J Dale was arrested on the charge of having deserted from the army. It would be great to report a scorecard entry, ‘absent at Her Majesty’s pleasure’, but instead Leicestershire just allowed another player to take his place.

Leicestershire did win three matches at Aylestone Road against touring teams earlier on in the 20^th century, the South Africans in 1901, the West Indies in 1906 and then the South Americans in 1932. None of these teams played Test matches though. The South Americans are noted more for their football or possibly rugby than cricket. At this time there was a substantial British ex pat community in Buenos Aires, and strong links with the coffee industry in Brazil, (commentator Brian Johnston spent a couple of years there buying beans for example). This team had a grand name but was really only an Argentinian team with a Chilean and a Brazilian representative. They were all South American born but many of them had been to school in England.