page_title: Tom Wills
section_title: Ambiguous professional
hierarchical_section_title: Tom Wills / Ambiguous professional
caption_attribution_description: English: Oil painting of Australian sportsman Tom Wills, held in the collection of the Melbourne Cricket Club.
context_page_description: Thomas Wentworth Wills was an Australian sportsman who is credited with being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the British penal colony of New South Wales to a wealthy family descended from convicts, Wills grew up in the bush on stations owned by his father, the squatter and politician Horatio Wills, in what is now the state of Victoria. As a child, he befriended local Aboriginal people, learning their language and customs. Aged 14, Wills went to England to attend Rugby School, where he became captain of its cricket team and played an early version of rugby football. After Rugby, Wills represented Cambridge University in the annual cricket match against Oxford, and played at first-class level for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club. An athletic bowling all-rounder with tactical nous, he was regarded as one of the finest young cricketers in England.
  Returning to Victoria in 1856, Wills achieved Australia-wide stardom as a cricketer, captaining the Victorian team to repeated victories in intercolonial matches.
context_section_description: Without career prospects outside of sport, Wills joined the MCC as a professional at the start of the 1867–68 season; however, he was not openly referred to as such. Instead, the club devised the title of 'tutor' in order that he maintain the prestige of his amateur background.
  Played on the MCG, the December 1867 intercolonial between Victoria and New South Wales ended in a sound victory for the former, principally due to Wills' nine-wicket haul and Richard Wardill's century. Wills had been Victoria's preferred captain for over a decade. Writing in his sports column, Hammersley claimed that, as a paid cricketer, Wills lacked "moral ascendancy" over amateurs. When he lost the captaincy to Wardill, an amateur, on the eve of the March 1869 match against New South Wales, he refused to play under him, or, indeed, anyone else. The Victorians condemned Wills and resolved to go on without him, after which he retracted his decision not to play. This was the last intercolonial played on the Domain and Victoria recovered from Wardill's diamond duck to win by 78 runs. Wills scalped 7 wickets in a single innings.
  After the intercolonial, Wills announced that he would not play for Victoria again, even if the colony wanted him. He planned to return to Cullin-la-ringo in early 1869, but his mother, still "very dissatisfied" with him, requested that he stay away from the station. The MCC took him back and he continued to act as a tutor with the club. Wills' former Aboriginal teammates, Mullagh and Cuzens, joined him at the MCC as paid bowlers.
  Wills' physical appearance had deteriorated; gaining weight, balding and generally unkempt, with "an alcoholic blush of his cheeks", he looked older than his years. Describing his body as "stiff" during a cricket match in 1870, he hinted, for the first time, that his talent was fading.
caption: Portrait of Wills in the colours of the MCC, William Handcock, 1870, National Sports Museum collection
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