Aboriginal match scrapped

The annual cricket match to commemorate the 1868 Aboriginal team that toured England has been scrapped for the next two summers, according to the Melbourne-based Age newspaper.

"It's gone straight on to the scrap-heap," said Geoff Clark, the official at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) who came up with the idea of the match in the first place. The Australian government has tried to sack Clark, and to bring an end to ATSIC.

In 2001, the first match, between the Prime Mininster's XI and the ATSIC Chairman's XI, was made memorable after Jason Gillespie was selected as captain of the ATSIC XI: he was the first Test cricketer to acknowledge an Aboriginal ancestry. At the time, John Howard, the Prime Minister, fully endorsed the fixture: "There are a lot of things that contribute towards the reconciliation process, and this is one of them."