The First Test Match — Australia vs England, Melbourne, March 1877

Lillywhite's tour was a private commercial venture — eleven professional players from England (almost all from the north and the south coast counties), travelling at their own risk for a share of the gate. They had played fifteens against colonial sides through the Australian and New Zealand summer of 1876-77.

The Melbourne match was promoted as the first eleven-a-side game between an English touring side and an All-Australian XI. England's first-choice wicketkeeper, Ted Pooley, was missing — he had been arrested in Christchurch after a betting dispute and was awaiting trial. The Australians went into the match underdogs in English betting; the home press treated it as a serious challenge.

The match arose almost by accident. James Lillywhite's professional touring party, on the way home from a New Zealand leg of their colonial tour, agreed to play a fifteen-a-side game in Melbourne against an All-Australian XI as the climax of their Australasian visit. The Australians, led by Dave Gregory of New South Wales and including five Victorians, four New South Welshmen and one Tasmanian (Tom Kendall), were given an even-numbered match — eleven a side — for the first time. Australia won the toss and batted on a hard MCG pitch. Charles Bannerman, opening, took strike to Alfred Shaw of Nottinghamshire, who delivered the first ball ever bowled in what would become Test cricket. Bannerman responded with a virtuoso 165 before retiring with a split finger, an innings that accounted for 67% of Australia's first-innings 245. England replied with 196, Australia made 104 in their second innings (Shaw 5/38), and England, set 154 to win, were dismissed for 108. Tom Kendall, the Hobart-born left-arm medium-pacer, took 7/55 to win the match by 45 runs.

“There never was such a beginning to anything as Bannerman's 165 was to Test cricket.”

The Australian XI shared a winner's purse and were feted in Melbourne. Lillywhite's side, stung by the defeat, agreed to a return match a fortnight later at the same ground; England won that second match by 4 wickets, levelling the unofficial 'series' at 1-1. Both fixtures were retrospectively classified as Tests by historians in the early 20th century.