The Melbourne Cricket Ground Hosts Its First Match — 30 September 1854

The original Melbourne Cricket Club ground was on what is now the site of Flinders Street Station. The arrival of the railway in the early 1850s — Australia's first steam line, linking Flinders Street with Sandridge (Port Melbourne) — required the cricketers to move. La Trobe's grant of land in Yarra Park, on the banks of the Yarra River, was both compensation and a long-term gift.

The new ground was prepared during the southern winter of 1853-54. The first match was a small affair, but the club timed the opening for the start of the Australian spring cricket season.

The Melbourne Cricket Club, founded in 1838, had played its early matches on a series of grounds in central Melbourne. By 1853 the colonial authorities had decided to lay Australia's first steam railway across the club's existing ground, and Governor Charles La Trobe granted the club a ten-acre area in Yarra Park as compensation. Building work continued through the autumn and winter of 1853-54; the playing surface was levelled, a perimeter fence erected and a small pavilion constructed. The first match on the ground was played on 30 September 1854 — a domestic Melbourne Cricket Club fixture, with no opposing colony involved. Within eighteen months the new MCG had hosted its first inter-colonial fixture, against New South Wales in March 1856; within seven years it would be the venue of the Stephenson tour's opening match on Christmas Day 1861, drawing a three-day aggregate of 45,000 spectators that established its place as the principal cricket arena of the colonies.

“The MCG was built in 1853, when the Melbourne Cricket Club was granted the land on which the club now stands after being forced to move from its previous site to make way for Australia's first steam railway line.”

The ground rapidly became the focal point of Melbourne cricket. The first inter-colonial match in March 1856 (Victoria's defeat to New South Wales) was followed by the Stephenson tour of 1861-62, the Parr tour of 1863-64 and, in March 1877, the very first Test match between Australia and England.