Eddie Gilbert: Best-Remembered Aboriginal Cricketer To Play First-Class Cricket In Australia

Eddie Gilbert was the best-remembered Aboriginal cricketer to play first-class cricket in Australia. In 1929, after years of playing with the Barambah Aboriginal cricket club, news of Eddie’s phenomenal success in local matches reached Brisbane and the Queensland Cricketing Association brought him to Woolloongabba for a demonstration. He slowly made his way up to playing with Queensland team and was a valuable member. The achievement that Eddie Gilbert is remembered for more than any other is his dismissal of the legendary Don Bradman for no score in a match at Brisbane in November 1931. It was an achievement that awarded Gilbert national fame.
“Only one bowler has ever knocked the bat out of the hands of Don Bradman, cricket's greatest batter: Eddie Gilbert. Only 15 bowlers have ever dismissed Bradman without a run to his name. Eddie Gilbert was one of them. Yet, whilst Bradman played test cricket for Australia for two decades,
Gilbert was never selected to play at the sport's highest level.” – This is a passage from the article “How racism destroyed a great cricketer” by Phil Shannon

Eddie Gilbert is widely acknowledged as the unluckiest Aboriginal sportsmen of that era. He received high praise and could have gone on to play for Australia.
Instead, his career was cut short when the Queensland Cricket Association told Gilbert his services were no longer required.’ Little doubt remains as to the motivations behind the association’s decision.
As an Aboriginal man living in Queensland in 1931, Eddie Gilbert was bound by the restrictions of the Protection of Aboriginals Act 1987. This meant that he needed written permission to travel from his Aboriginal settlement each time he played in a first-class match. Gilbert received horrendous amounts of hate and was commonly ‘heckled’ during games. One Queensland player refused to ever speak to Gilbert, one batter deliberately tried to run him out in his first game and some refused to share train sleeping compartments, taxis, hotel rooms or dining tables with him. His fame and success on the cricket ground opened doors that were closed for other Aborigines. In Adelaide, when Gilbert was late to a movie he was seeing with his teammates, he was denied entry by the usher until the manager confirmed his identity and Gilbert was
admitted.

Eddie Gilbert became a role model for many indigenous and even white people. He gave hope to Aboriginals and proved to many white people that despite what colour skin they have, Aboriginals are extremely skilled people and not at all different. He was the reason many indigenous people started doing what they loved and fought for their rights.

Eddie Gilbert was a well-known indigenous Australian cricketer born in Woodford, Queensland in 1905 and passed away in Wacol, Queensland on January 9th, 1978 after having poor health for many years. His birth is not registered and his parents are unknown but came from North Queensland. At a very young age, Eddie and his brother were taken from their parents in Durundur (an Aboriginal reserve near Woodford), as part of a government policy on Aboriginal people.

Eddie and his brother were imprisoned in the children’s dormitory on Barambah reserve near Murgon. Their education they were receiving from their family and the tribal influences were replaced with strict schooling up until grade 4. Eddie was then contracted out by the reserve superintendent as an unskilled labourer in seasonal occupations (short-term positions usually related to the time of year), working sun-up to sun-down for tea, flour and rations. He took up cricket at a young age under the inspiration of Jack Datlight, when the Barambah Aboriginal cricket club was formed in 1917. Initially he was a slow bowler but quickly developed pace helped by a flexible wrist that he said was from years of boomerang throwing.