Images of early cricket in Australia

The earliest known images of cricket in Australia are a series of three watercolours of Hyde Park painted in 1842, by artist and photographer John Rae. The informality of these sketches contrasts with Thomas Lewis' watercolour Hyde Park, The Old Days of Merry Cricket Club Matches.

In his only known painting, Lewis, who was good enough to represent New South Wales against England, shows a game being played in 1843. The match was probably between a local team and a team drawn from a British regiment stationed in Sydney. Another early image is a delightful watercolour by J.B. Henderson titled Cricket Ground, Richmond in which fashionably dressed spectators display little interest as a fieldsman desperately chases the ball to the boundary.

The second intercolonial game between NSW and Victoria played on Sydney's Domain in 1857 was captured by the notable colonial artist S.T. Gill in a hand-coloured lithograph titled The Grand National Cricket Match.

In another work attributed to Gill, titled The Grand Cricket Match, the first English team to tour Australia is shown playing Twenty-Two of New South Wales at the Sydney Domain in 1862. A photograph of this match was also produced by the Freeman Brothers Studio. It is one of the earliest photographs of a cricket game taken in Australia.