Adelaide invents its own electric light form of cricket, burning bright from 1930s Depression years to the 2000s
Tim Ide's illustration of Adelaide's invention, electric light cricket, being played in the Adelaide city parklands near Peacock Road. The game had one batsman at a time scoring by hitting through a ring of fielders to the fences. Inset: The South Australian game was featured on Movietone cinema newsreels in England in 1938.
Main illustration courtesy Experience Adelaide, City of Adelaide
Adelaide invented its own one-off sporting experiment – electric light cricket – in a western suburban Cowandilla back garden during the 1930s Depression years.
The game was the idea of returned serviceman and tram dispatcher Alf Stone in 1930. He’d rollout a cricket pitch on his large back lawn and involved local youths – mostly unemployed – for a hit with the bat at night. Soon 50 youths were coming in every night and Stone rigged up a house light globes. He shared the game with friends at the Hilton sub branch of the Returned Soldiers' League (RSL) and it spread throughout South Australia’s RSL clubs as the Diggers Game.
Stone patented the game that had its first official match in 1933. Electric light cricket was played in an enclosed area about three quarters the size of a tennis court. A tennis ball was used and bowling was underarm. A ring of up to 18 fielders surrounded the batsman and shots that got through it to the fence were awarded two, four or six. There were 36 overs of 12 deliveries in an innings. Batsmen didn’t run, so only one was on the pitch. They had to retire at 100 runs. Team totals of more than 1,000 were possible and the game encouraged innovative batting.
By the mid 1930s, many business houses, factories, workshops and sport clubs had formed teams for men’s and women’s competitions. A clubhouse and six courts were built in Adelaide’s southern parklands at Blue Gum Park/Kurangga (Park 20) on Peacock Road, between King William Road and King William Street, with a string of lights above each court.
After World War II, electric light cricket grew, with 7,000 players by 1949. It also spread to Test cricketers: Garfield Sobers, Ian Chappell, Gil Langley, Barry Jarman and Wayne Phillips. Electric Light Cricket Association secretary Roger Woodcock, who played the game for 35 years, was among the Australian rules football champions, including Glenelg's Colin Churchett and Sturt's John Halbert, who played to keep fit in the off season.
A remarkable record was set by David Jarrett, who played for teams including The News, Sturt, Glenunga and Railways, from 1962 for 22 seasons and won the best bowler trophy in 21 of them.
The game made some inroads interstate – attracting Test players like Lindsay Hassett and Bert Ironmonger – but the sport remained distinctively South Australian. It waned in the 1980s with the rise of indoor cricket. A 1990s mini revival in the 1990s couldn’t stop its end in 2006, with the parklands clubhouse demolished.
The “Gaslamp Game” of 1889 at The Oval in London, with a match between Yorkshire and Surrey lit by lamps in the pavilion and streets may be a precedent but Adelaide’s electric light era was a fitting, through probably unacknowledged, prelude to the city being chosen for the first day-night Test at Adelaide Oval in 2015.