The sixth Australian team visited us in 1888, and as W. L. Murdoch had at that time practically retired from first-class cricket, the captaincy devolved upon that sterling hitter, P. S. McDonnell. This team, though including some excellent players at all branches of the game, cannot be considered equal in merit to that of 1882. Three representative matches were again arranged, as in 1886. The first was played at Lord’s upon a wicket deluged with rain, and the Australians won in a small-scoring match by 61 runs. They won on their merits as the game was played, and the English batsmen on that occasion deserved to lose. On a most difficult wicket, and against C. T. B. Turner and J. J. Ferris’s bowling, they poked and scraped about, and seemed utterly unable to realise what each Australian batsman had done, viz. that to make runs under such circumstances the bat must be used vigorously. Though the Australians here scored their second success since 1878 in England in a representative match, the supporters of England were in nowise satisfied that the Australians had the better side. Two really good bowlers their opponents had in Turner and Ferris, but no one else on their side had any pretensions to being called first-class in this department of the game. Their batting, taken as a whole, was weak--McDonnell, of course, was a fine player, but the rest could not be compared to our best English batsmen. Then their fielding was hardly up to the standard of previous colonial teams. Altogether the English side did not fear the result of the next two matches if played under ordinary conditions of weather and luck. The second match, at the Oval, resulted in a win for England by an innings and 137 runs, and the third, played at Manchester, in another win for the same side by an innings and 21 runs. The feature of the season’s cricket played by this side was the bowling of C. T. B. Turner and J. J. Ferris. Turner’s analysis was remarkable--314 wickets for 3,492 runs, giving the excellent average of 11·38. This bowler is undoubtedly entitled to take rank amongst the really great bowlers of this generation of cricketers. J. J. Ferris, though he met with wonderful success this season (1888), was never in the same class as C. T. B. Turner.