page_title: England cricket team
section_title: Early tours
hierarchical_section_title: England cricket team / History / Early tours
caption_attribution_description: English: The first English team to tour overseas, on board ship to North America.
context_page_description: The England cricket team represents England and Wales in international cricket. Since 1997, it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board, having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club since 1903. England, as a founding nation, is a Full Member of the International Cricket Council with Test, One Day International and Twenty20 International status. Until the 1990s, Scottish and Irish players also played for England as those countries were not yet ICC members in their own right.
  England and Australia were the first teams to play a Test match, and along with South Africa, these nations formed the Imperial Cricket Conference on 15 June 1909. England and Australia also played the first ODI on 5 January 1971. England's first T20I was played on 13 June 2005, once more against Australia.
  As of 17 August 2020, England have played 1,028 Test matches, winning 374 and losing 305. In Test series against Australia, England play for The Ashes, one of the most famous trophies in all of sport, and they have won the urn on 32 occasions. England have also played 749 ODIs, winning 377.
context_section_description: The first overseas tour occurred in September 1859 with England touring North America. This team had six players from the All-England Eleven, six from the United All-England Eleven and was captained by George Parr.
  With the outbreak of the American Civil War, attention turned elsewhere. English tourists visited Australia in 1861–62 with this first tour organised as a commercial venture by Messrs Spiers and Pond, restaurateurs of Melbourne. Most matches played during tours prior to 1877 were "against odds", with the opposing team fielding more than 11 players to make for a more even contest. This first Australian tour were mostly against odds of at least 18/11.
  The tour was so successful that Parr led a second tour in 1863–64. James Lillywhite led a subsequent England team which sailed on the P&O steamship Poonah on 21 September 1876. They played a combined Australian XI, for once on even terms of 11-a-side. The match, starting on 15 March 1877 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground came to be regarded as the inaugural Test match. The combined Australian XI won this Test match by 45 runs with Charles Bannerman of Australia scoring the first Test century. At the time, the match was promoted as James Lillywhite's XI v Combined Victoria and New South Wales. The teams played a return match on the same ground at Easter, 1877, when Lillywhite's team avenged their loss with a victory by four wickets. The first Test match on English soil occurred in 1880 with England victorious; this was the first time England fielded a fully representative side with W. G. Grace included in the team.
caption: The 1859 English team to North America.
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