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Bicentennial Test

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Bicentennial Test

The Bicentennial Test was a single Test cricket match played between Australia and England at the Sydney Cricket Ground in celebration of the bicentenary of permanent colonial settlement in Australia. The match took place from 29 January to 2 February 1988 and was drawn. It did not count as part of The Ashes series, in the same way as the Centenary Tests in 1977 and 1980 also were excluded from the Ashes lists.

The match was played in the middle of an England tour to New Zealand, where the team later played three Test matches, all of them also drawn. In late 1987, the England team had toured Pakistan, and Australia had hosted Tests and One Day Internationals against New Zealand. Australia also hosted a single test against Sri Lanka after the Bicentennial test in Perth in February 1988.

Following the test, a one-day international was also played as part of the bicentennial celebrations, which Australia won.

Sydney's reputation for favouring spin bowling led both sides to pick two specialist spin bowlers and to favour medium-pace or fast-medium bowling over out-and-out speed.

England were captained by Mike Gatting, fresh from his finger-wagging confrontation with umpire Shakoor Rana, and lacked several of the big name players of recent years, such as Graham Gooch, David Gower, Allan Lamb, and Ian Botham.

The team was, in batting order:

Australia were captained by Allan Border. The team, in batting order, was:

England won the toss and batted. Broad shared stands of 93 with Moxon, who made 40, and 99 with Robinson, who made 43, on his way to a century on the first day. Wickets fell more steadily across the second day, including Broad for 139. Broad reacted angrily to his dismissal, and flattened the leg stump with his bat as he departed: he was fined the maximum permitted (£500) by the tour manager. England's final total of 425 contained no other scores of more than 50: the next highest after Broad was French with 47.

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