“Whatever the scheme actually was, it failed”: Match-Fixing, Denials and Cover-Ups

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Shaw’s team that toured North America, Australia and New Zealand in 1881–82. Back row: George Ulyett, Richard Pilling, James Lillywhite, John Conway (Manager), Billy Midwinter, William Bates. Middle row: Arthur Shrewsbury, Alfred Shaw, Tom Emmett, Edward Peate. On floor: Richard Barlow, William Scotton, John Selby.

During the 1881–82 season, a team of professional English cricketers toured Australia under the management of Alfred Shaw, Arthur Shrewsbury and James Lillywhite. In a financial sense, the tour was an undoubted success; from a cricketing viewpoint, results were respectable. The cricketing establishment in England took little notice as such an all-professional scheme was distasteful to them, but the tour was closely followed in Australia. One of the best results for the English team — which was captained throughout by Shaw — came in a first-class match against Victoria in mid-December. Shaw’s team won a close game after following on, a result which stung several gamblers, and the bookmakers who took a keen interest. The rest of the tour progressed smoothly, and after completing thirty games, Shaw’s men left Australia on the Orient Line steamship Chimborazo on 22 March; it sailed from Melbourne to Adelaide, from where it sailed towards England on 24 March. On the very next day, a story broke in Australia; while the team were still onboard the Chimborazo, something similar appeared in English newspapers — apparently based on letters sent by the players during the course of the tour. The outline of the story, which was not proven and was generally disbelieved by the press, was that two of the team took a bribe to underperform in that Victoria game. A third player supposedly reported them, and a fight broke out between the three. The “leak” seemed to grow within the Nottinghamshire team over the course of April before emerging in the press, and the two who were alleged to have accepted the money were Yorkshire’s George Ulyett and Nottinghamshire’s John Selby. The identity of the “whistleblower” remained unknown at that time.

While rumours swirled around the press, Shaw’s team were still on their way home and would have been unaware of the gathering storm for much of their journey. Exactly when they found out about the story is unknown, but is quite an important point. On 23 April the Chimborazo arrived at Suez. A blockage in the Suez Canal seems to have delayed their further progress. For reasons that are unclear, George Ulyett and John Selby separated from the others, travelled overland from Brindisi in Italy, and were the first to arrive in England on 2 May. A second group comprising Lillywhite, Richard Barlow, Billy Bates, Ted Peate and Billy Midwinter also travelled overland via Naples and arrived home on 5 May. Shaw, Shrewsbury, William Scotton, Richard Pilling and Tom Emmett remained on the Chimborazo, which eventually reached Plymouth on 11 May.

Why did the team split up? It was not unusual during tours for players to travel home separately, sometimes owing to individuals’ dislike of sea travel, or because some of the team wished to get home faster. But for Ulyett and Selby to depart together, given that these were the two men around whom the rumours centred could be viewed as strong circumstantial evidence of some unusual occurrences. But unless they knew that the story had broken — which they both later denied — they would have had no reason to hurry home. Could they have found out? There are a few possibilities. Although the story first appeared in the Sydney Herald the day after they left Australia, it seems unlikely that it could have overtaken them on the journey. More details were printed in The Scotsman on 17 April; it is not implausible that copies of that newspaper — or of the many others which reprinted the story — could have reached Suez by 23 April. Alternatively, someone could have sent a telegram to the team or to the players; later reports suggested that the rumours fully came to light (but were not printed) at game between Nottinghamshire and the Nottinghamshire Colts on 18 and 19 April, and that Ulyett and Selby’s names were privately associated with the story from an early date in England. Perhaps this is how they discovered what was happening, or perhaps it is just an enormous coincidence.

When they reached England on 2 May, Ulyett and Selby immediately stated that the rumours were false, and suggested that they had not heard anything about them before their arrival in England. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph stated that Ulyett and Selby “will take such measures as may be deemed requisite to wipe out the slander.” William Bates, part of the group who arrived back on 5 May, also spoke to reporters about the story upon his return home. He stated that none of those who travelled with him — he named Midwinter, Lillywhite and Barlow, but not Peate, who was part of the same group — saw the story until reading it in a newspaper they saw in Paris. A report in the Huddersfield Chronicle on 6 May stated: “While wishful to know where the rumour originated, [Bates] stated that there was not a word of truth in it.”

While none of these denials were especially convincing, there is no proof that the players were lying. Having had a few days to reflect — and perhaps talk to members of the second group to arrive home — Ulyett spoke further about the story. He gave an interview on 8 May, the fullest version of which appeared later that week in The Sportsman, in which he suggested that “it may have arisen out of a little pleasantry at Cootamundra, the place where [Billy] Murdoch lives. There two members of Shaw’s team certainly did have a bit of fun (as the Yorkshireman calls it) — that is, they had a set-to … ‘So far from me having anything to do with the matter, as has been reported, I was the very first to stop the affair when I saw they were losing their tempers.'” Selby appears to have been privately telling a similar story, although he gave no interviews. Cootamundra, incidentally, was where the English team played immediately before the Victoria match.

Here the matter rested for a time in the press, but rumour clearly continued to circulate in the cricket world. Before long, it had reached the ears of Lord Harris, one of the most influential men in English cricket, and he was clearly unhappy that there had been no word from the team organisers. He wrote a letter to The Times which was published on 24 May: “A rumour such as this is a public accusation, and as such ought to be, if possible, publicly contradicted. But has there been any public authoritative contradiction? I have seen none. I noticed that on their return Shaw and Shrewsbury emphatically denied that there was any foundation for the rumour. But this contradiction was not made by any means as public as the rumour.” Harris made clear that he did not believe the story: “I know George Ulyett as well as any professional in England, and I would willingly stake my honour on his.” He reserved judgement a little more on Selby, but added that he had “no reason whatever for supposing him other than an honourable cricketer.” He finished: “I demand … for the sake of the reputation of English professional cricketers, for the honour of cricket, but, more than all, for the sake of the accused, some public refutation of the ‘Cricket Scandal in Australia’; and I would suggest that it take the form of an affidavit, sworn to and signed by every member of Shaw’s team, to the effect that, to the best of each man’s knowledge and belief, no member of the team did entertain any proposal not to do his best in any match during the tour in Australia.” Harris’ proposal was endorsed a few days later by Edmond Wilder, the President of the Cricketers’ Fund Friendly Society, an organisation that helped professionals in financial difficulty.

James Lillywhite also wrote a letter which appeared in several publications that same week, in which he too denied any impropriety had taken place; he specified that Ulyett and Selby had been accused of accepting £100 but stated that nothing untoward took place during the tour, at the Victoria match or in any other. He added that he had been the team umpire, and he saw nothing. He hoped that this would reassure Lord Harris and everyone else. But not everyone was yet satisfied.

Up until then, the only names mentioned publicly were Ulyett and Selby. The identity of the “whistle-blower” remained unpublished. That changed with the intervention of William Robert Wake, a relatively well-known Sheffield cricketer who played three times for Yorkshire in 1881. Away from cricket, he played football and lacrosse, was a solicitor and later became the Registrar of the Sheffield County Court. In other words, he was influential and more of an establishment figure than a friend of professionals. But Lord Harris’ letter in the Times seems to have inspired him to get involved and throw back the curtain on what was being alleged behind the scenes.

On 29 May 1882, Wake had a letter published simultaneously in The Times, Leeds Mercury and the Sheffield Independent in which he claimed that Ulyett and Selby had been offered £500 to throw the match, and were “authorised to offer Scotton £250”. This was the first time that William Scotton — another Nottinghamshire cricketer — had his name publicly associated with the incident. According to Wake’s letter, which was structured as a series of accusatory questions, Scotton turned down the offer, told Shaw and came to blows with Selby and Ulyett — which was what the Scotsman had reported a month before. Wake claimed that a fight (it is unclear if he meant the same altercation or a different one) had taken place between Scotton and Selby “at Cootamundra (or elsewhere)” and that Scotton had written to his father revealing what had happened. He suggested that “the ‘scandal’ [was] one of the principal themes of conversation” on the Chimborazo, that Shaw had admitted that “something unpleasant” had taken place and that several of the team had indicated that “there was more ‘carrying on’ (I use their own expression) in Shaw’s team than anyone not present would believe”.

Incidentally, the text of his letter appears to have differed depending on where he sent it: The Times had the Assam as the location of the gossip, not the Chimborazo. This makes a difference as the Assam was the ship on which an Australian team travelled to play in England in 1882. There was another difference in the letters, either omitted by Wake when he wrote to The Times or removed by an editor. His final question in the other versions was: “Is it not a fact that (contrary to the statement made in the local papers) Ulyett and Selby were aware of the rumour before reaching their respective homes, and was not the subject mentioned to them in the Criterion [presumably the London restaurant] by a gentleman connected with the Sportsman and by another hailing from this district?”

The biggest problem is how Wake could have had such detailed information which never appeared elsewhere. The Athletic News identified him as “a member of the Yorkshire County Executive” and the man responsible for bringing Ulyett to prominence as a cricketer; the latter is a curious claim as Wake was a year younger than Ulyett, who first emerged in the 1870s. Yet he seemed remarkably well-informed. Nor, as a respected solicitor, was he the kind of person who would have written letters to newspapers which had no basis in reality. Had he seen the letter which he suggested had been written by Scotton? If it existed, this is the most likely source of his information. Or had he perhaps spoken to members of the Nottinghamshire or Yorkshire teams? And why did he decide to bring all this out into the open? His letter was framed as a follow-up to Lord Harris’ request for some kind of official clarification, but he went much further than Harris, and his tone indicates that the players had some kind of case to answer (which Harris did not suggest).

If nothing else, Wake’s suggestion that Ulyett and Selby had not told the truth about when they first heard of the accusations does seem possible, given their rapid arrival in England. But he seems to have been unaware that Ulyett had provided a partial explanation for the story of a fight.

William Scotton (Image: Wikipedia)

As a result of the growing clamour in the press, Ulyett asked to speak to the Committee of the MCC and on 29 May made the official statement which had been called for: “As far as I know, neither I nor any of the team know anything about it. It is not true that any offer of money, as far as I am aware, was made to me or anyone else.” Tom Emmett, one of the other members of the touring team, was also present when Ulyett spoke to the MCC. These are two strangely constructed and slightly contorted sentences, and the qualification of “as far as I know” covers a multitude of possibilities. A similarly carefully-worded statement was made by Shaw and Selby on 12 June: “We, the undersigned, wish to state, with regard to the so called cricket scandal in Australia, that we emphatically deny that there is any truth in the rumour that either we, or so far as we know, any other of the team were offered a bribe to lose any of the Australian matches; nor did we hear any such report until after our arrival in England.”

“En Passant” in the Athletic News was not convinced by what Shaw and Selby had to say: “This latter clause reads queer in the face of a previous statement, which has gone the round of the papers, that the scandal was published in a Sydney paper before the team sailed for England. I had it from one of the eleven that they read about it at Sydney before leaving. It has a singular look, to say the least of it.” This is possible, although the first Australian version seems to have been printed in Sydney the day after Shaw’s team departed from Adelaide. But the question of when the players first read the story remains very murky.

Few people in England seemed to believe that any of their cricketers would be guilty of such an offence, and, after the official denials, there the matter largely rested. In June, a newspaper (the story seems to have first appeared in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph on 6 June but summaries appeared in several other places) stated: “There was something in the nature of a fight between two members of Shaw’s team in Australia. It is quite true also that Ulyett intervened, but it was in the character of a peacemaker. The origin of the quarrel was that prolific source of mischief — a domestic dispute … It is a delicate affair, but I am assured most strongly that there was no question of bribery in any shape or form.” This delicacy was supposedly the reason that the team had been reluctant to offer an earlier explanation. This account tallies with Ulyett’s interview from 8 May.

However, the main problem with this report is that the reader (and historian) can assume too much. Ulyett and Selby were the two men rumoured to have taken the bribe; The Scotsman reported that a fight had broken out between the two guilty parties (whom it never named) and the whistleblower, who had been invited to become involved; Ulyett admitted his own involvement as a “peacemaker” at Cootamundra. Therefore one of the other men must have been Selby, and as Scotton had been named by Wake as the aggrieved whistle-blower, the implication is that he must have been the other combatant.

This is certainly how it has been interpreted by some historians. According to Malcolm Knox in Never a Gentleman’s Game (2012), the Scotton-Selby dispute was over a woman. David Frith suggests in Silence of the Heart (2001) that “the clouded cause [was] either a proposed match bribe or ‘marital jealousy’.” There is possible independent — albeit circumstantial — evidence to support this interpretation. Scotton had separated from his wife in 1880, she filed for divorce in 1882 and it was granted in 1883. The reason was that Scotton had been frequently violent towards her; he had also begun a relationship with another woman in 1880, although details are scarce. With this turmoil going on in his private life, the notoriously sensitive Scotton may well have become angry enough to fight if Selby raised the issue; or he may have become involved with another woman and clashed in some way with Selby over the affair.

But no contemporary account explicitly linked the battle of the “delicate affair” with the bribery allegations. Even in Wake’s letter, there is the suggestion (made unclear by his clumsy phrasing) that the two incidents were separate. Taking this into account puts these assumptions about the fight in doubt. Just because Ulyett was involved does not mean he must also have been involved in the match-fixing. We should also be careful not to build too strong a case regarding who else was involved in Ulyett’s encounter (and why) on such poor evidence.

After June 1882, the matter was largely forgotten. Australian newspapers printed the developments such as Lord Harris’ letter when news reached them, but they too remained sceptical and could add no new information. Ulyett’s reputation was unscathed and he played in the famous “Ashes” Test match against the touring Australians at the end of August 1882 under the captaincy of Lord Harris, alongside Barlow, Barnes and Peate of Shaw’s team. He was a member of England’s first choice side at home throughout the 1880s and also toured Australia again with Shaw and Shrewsbury in 1884–85. Clearly no-one had any concerns about him. Scotton too was an England regular, playing at home in 1884 and 1886 and touring with Shaw and Shrewsbury in 1884–85 and 1886–87.

Selby was less fortunate. He never appeared in a home Test match and although his career lasted until 1887, he never toured Australia again. This does not mean that there was a “falling out”; he played for a team selected by Shaw against the Australians in 1882, and his absence from touring sides was quite likely connected to a collapse in his form. But there are some question marks surrounding him. Derek Carlaw, in an article on the story (unfortunately, I have only seen a copy of a copy, and do not know where it was originally printed), noted that a book in the Nottinghamshire cricket library at Trent Bridge contains what was presumably a list of cricketers; next to Selby’s name, someone had written “a brilliant cricketer but a blackguard”. Selby’s benefit money in 1887 was instantly swallowed up to pay off his debts and there were questions — including ones of possible criminality — over his finances up until his death in 1893.

The only other member of Shaw’s team to play no further Tests or take part in any more tours was Tom Emmett (Shaw never played another Test but was a manager alongside Shrewsbury for several more tours). Billy Midwinter returned to Australia after the 1882 season, and played all his future Test matches for the land of his birth. There is nothing definitely incriminating in any of this.

Alfred Shaw in the early 1890s (Image: Wikipedia)

Billy Midwinter in 1884 (Image: National Library of Australia)

Nearly twenty years later, the story was revived when Shaw published Alfred Shaw, Cricketer: His Career and Reminiscences, assisted by A. W. Pullin (“Old Ebor”), in 1902. After so much time, and with all those involved in the allegations dead, Shaw confirmed that there was indeed a basis to all the rumours, in complete contradiction of what he had said at the time. Yet he remained somewhat vague in his details. He said: “It came to our knowledge that there was a great deal of betting on the result of the [Victoria] match. Most extravagant odds were offered on the Victorian team, in spite of the fact that the weather was wet, and there was a possibility of the home batsmen having to play on a sticky wicket, to which they were unaccustomed.”

Shaw then related how Midwinter — whose name never arose in the contemporary rumours and reports — informed him that, after the third day’s play, bookmakers were offering 30 to one against the English team; Shaw and “other members of the team” made a £1 bet on their team to win. As Shaw made clear, this was on the third day, when his team were still batting. When the Victorians had to make 94 to win on the final day, he believed that, in the conditions, they had no chance against his bowlers.

He continued:

“There were certain influences at work beneath the surface which it is necessary to speak of in order to convey a true version of this remarkable match. It had been hinted to me that two members of our team, both now dead, had received a promise of a “bet” of £100 to nothing on the Victorians winnings. I gave no credence to it at the time I heard of it, but certain cases of misfielding compelled me to come to the conclusion that the rumours were not without foundation. Whatever the scheme actually was, it failed. A remarkable curious circumstance was that after one ridiculously easy catch had been dropped, a batsman was out by the ball going up inside a fieldsman’s arm and sticking there — not, I have reason to think, with the catcher’s intentional aid.”

After relating how the story travelled to England, and quoting the Scotsman article, Shaw stated that the Australians had not been aware of anything wrong “and were quite as much astonished at the rumour as we were.” He also identified the whistle-blower as Midwinter — not Scotton, as had been claimed in 1882.

“It was Midwinter who informed me of the offer made, and he it was who was afterwards maltreated, a quarrel taking place on ship-board. The players implicated in the unsavoury business are, as I have said, both dead, and it is but justice to their memory to say that both indignantly denied the allegation made, and that though my co-managers and myself made every effort to probe the facts and find out who it was that had offered the alleged bribes, we were unable to obtain any information to which credence could be given, and the whole matter was therefore allowed to drop.”

Shaw concluded that part of his tale by stating that “fair and sensible conclusions were drawn by the sportsmen of the Australian Press” and proceeded to quote the Australasian article of 29 April 1882 which condemned the professionals for keeping “late hours”. No-where in his account did he name Ulyett or Selby — both of whom were indeed dead by 1902, as were Midwinter and Scotton — but his audience likely remembered that they were the two against whom the accusations were made.

The biggest sticking point in matching Shaw’s story with earlier reports is the identity of the whistle-blower. W. R. Wake wrote in 1882 that it was Scotton and apparently had seen the letter(s) from one (or more) of the team; and the story arrived in England before the team — or any relevant Australian newspapers — did, which means that the source almost certainly had to be a player. And Wake’s letter implied that Scotton’s letter to his father was the source, matching earlier suggestion that the rumours were emanating from Nottinghamshire. But Shaw says Midwinter told him, and was man approached by the “match-fixers”.

We have two contradictory and largely irreconcilable versions of what happened, but there are a few possible routes through the confusion. Perhaps Midwinter was the whistle-blower to Shaw, but Scotton was the man who — accidentally or otherwise — leaked the story by writing home. Then there is the fight. Shaw indicates that Midwinter was “maltreated” during a ship-board “quarrel”. Was this the same fight which Ulyett discussed, or was it a different one? Because the simplest explanation for the confusion over who was involved would be that there were two separate incidents: one involving Scotton and someone else, possibly Selby, which Ulyett broke up; and another involving Midwinter and those he had accused of match-fixing. Could it be that these two events were mixed up when the rumours broke out? Or that Wake misinterpreted Scotton’s letter which talked about the bribes and his own fight? If this is the case, it is hard to be sure about which players were involved in which incident, casting doubt on the identities of the match-fixers (neither of whom was named by Shaw).

The only person who can be proven to have lied is Shaw; his statement in 1882 was that nothing had occurred but in 1902 he said that he was suspicious and had been told about a bribe. Both things cannot be true. Yet he was able to include accurate text from two newspaper articles covering the story from 1882, including one printed in Australia; which suggests that he, or someone close to him, collected the clippings, or had them sent to him. That he kept them for twenty years means that the story meant something to him. And he chose not to quote any of the articles which cast doubt on the rumour, or any of the official denials.

Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1878 (Image: Charles Nettleton (1826–1902) via National Library of Australia)

After all this time, it is impossible to work out what actually happened, but perhaps Shaw’s possession of newspaper clippings twenty years later might tip the balance towards there being substance to the rumours — even if we do not necessarily trust Shaw’s own version of events. Contemporary accounts do not quite support what he said. No newspaper mentions any ball being caught by “going up inside a fieldsman’s arm and sticking there”. There were a few dropped catches and misfields at a crucial time in the fourth innings, but nothing that attracted the attention of any journalists and nothing that could not be reasonably attributed to the effects of pressure. Chances were missed by Shrewsbury and Peate, both of whom played key roles in the win on that last day with three catches and six wickets respectively. Scotton also dropped a catch. More suspiciously, Ulyett was guilty of a couple of misfields and a missed catch. But Selby held two catches, including the key wicket of the top-scorer Harry Boyle when Victoria needed just 19 more runs; if he was being paid to underperform, he did not offer value for money in that match.

Did Shaw see these things, and with Midwinter’s warnings in his ears, jump too quickly to a conclusion? Or did a player and captain of his experience know that something was not right? Neither Midwinter nor Ulyett bowled, which could be taken to mean that Shaw did not trust them (as Malcolm Knox suggests in Never a Gentleman’s Game), but it is equally possible that he thought other bowlers could use the rain-affected pitch more effectively.

But if, as seems likely, Shaw did suspect some of his team of accepting money, why did he not take action? Why did he issue a statement of denial? The answer is probably prosaic. Along with his partners Shrewsbury and Lillywhite, he had ambitions to organise more tours; he would not want his team associated with such damaging allegations. Perhaps self-interest took precedence over morals. Nevertheless, future tours organised by Shaw, Shrewsbury and Lillywhite — of which there were several — featured an agreement with the players which included a penalty clause of £20 for anybody guilty of “impropriety or misconduct”.

What probably helped Shaw’s attempted whitewash in 1882 was that little credence was attached to the rumours. And the bribery tale received little attention in later years, even after his memoirs had been published. It was mentioned by Home Gordon in 1939, but Harry Altham deliberately omitted it from his History of Cricket (published at various times in the 1930s and 1940s): he uses Shaw’s memoir — including the odds of 30 to one — as his main source but does not include the bribery allegations. More recent accounts have covered the scandal but have rather confusingly mixed Shaw’s memoir and contemporary reports in their retellings, resulting in overly simplified summaries. This strange blind-spot was most likely a symptom of the exceptionalism which existed within English cricket for many years and which has occasionally stirred when modern match-fixing concerns have arisen. Maybe it would help if more people knew of the 1882 allegations against Ulyett and Selby. Or whoever it might have been who Shaw thought had taken the money. Because whatever happened during that match against Victoria in 1881, it does not really reflect favourably on anyone involved.