There's a special connection between the MCG and Koori men of the Woiwurrung nation, after their ancestors first descended onto Country and broke out into corroboree rituals.

The same could be said for Test fast bowler Scott Boland and the hallowed turf of the 'G, following the Gulidjan man's day of reckoning which saw him capture 6-7 in his 2021 Test debut against England.

But nearly 155 years earlier – give and take a few days – of that remarkable feat, and 108 years before the first Boxing Day Test during the 1974-75 Ashes series, a remarkable cricket match was held for the time.

Hearing of a talented group Aboriginal players first engaging in the foreign game of cricket throughout parts of the colony of Victoria, a significant number of members of the Melbourne Cricket Club requested their committee to organise a match against the Victorian side in November of 1866.

MCC head librarian David Studham is well versed in this tale, having been employed at the library for one-fifth of its institution's existence.

The joyous yet also sad yarn, Studham tells, is actually older than the library itself that was only founded in 1873.

"A range of primary evidence (in the library) showed that the MCC wanted to invite leading Aboriginal players in the colony of Victoria at request of many of their members," Studham said.

The MCC approached representatives on behalf of the Koori cricketers, who were reportedly quite enthusiastic to the approach, but most, who lived on reserves on Jardwadjali, Djabwurrung and Dhauwurdwurrung lands in the Western Districts of Victoria, were unable to attend amid the crescendo of their sheep shearing season.

They instead proposed to the MCC that the match take place from Boxing Day, in spite of the best Victorian players scheduled to travel to Sydney to face the colony of New South Wales.

The first of the Boxing Day intercolonial contests the year before was held in Melbourne.

By chance, before a new date was set for an 'Aborigines XI' to play Victoria, the MCC had already agreed to a return match away to appease New South Wales players, who complained they were forced to miss Christmas Day and away from their families in 1865.

For context, while the two future Sheffield Shield state teams would start an annual tradition of playing on December 26 that drew big crowds during Don Bradman's era before the era of Test cricket, the two matches scheduled on that same date in 1866 still went ahead.

But the vast majority of Victoria's cricketers, including Tom Wills – the son of a wealthy family who descended from convicts but reputedly befriended Aboriginal people and once learned the now extinct language of the Djab Wurrung clan – were more interested about playing the Aboriginal players while also remaining in Melbourne.

"Some of these Victorian cricketers then said 'well, we're not going to go to Sydney to play New South Wales – we want to stay in the state and play in this match'," Studham says.

"There are some of those documents from the time: there's one of the illustrated newspapers of the time and we have got the last negative from 1866, which is the first photographs from 1866 that was used for publicity of the match."

The match, set to be played across three days attracted about 10,000 spectators, which was the same attendance as the previous year's intercolonial match in Melbourne, but double the figures that turned up at the SCG on the corresponding dates of that year.

While the match finished inside one and a half days after the strong MCC side comfortably beat the "nervous", mostly Victorian Aboriginal players, according to Studham, to doubt their skills, the MCC decides to hold a second match over the remaining day and a half at late notice.

In a twist on race relations of the time, the match was coined the 'Natives' versus the 'Rest of the World'.

The name of the Natives conjures up connotations of colonial attitudes of the highest order, but Studham said it wasn't what it may have seemed.

"It is Australian black and white-born players combined into the one team, so black and white Australians against the immigrants," he says.

"If you think about it in modern terms, it is quite fascinating.

"Half of the white cricketers (from the MCC side) and half of the black cricketers (from the Aboriginal side) playing in against players from (as in born in) England, Scotland and Ireland.

"You did have in men's cricket … first-class cricketers from the Aboriginal players, like Eddie Gilbert later on, but they didn't get to Test level for whatever reason."

This was the second of four matches Aboriginal cricketers participated in on either side of their 1868 winter tour of England, which saw players become the first – black or white – to leave Australian shores nine years before the beginning of Test match cricket.

But celebrating the momentous occasion ends on a sad note, Studham points out.

He reads a passage out of Tom Wills' own Australian Cricketers Guide ahead of the third and the fourth 'Aborigine XI' return matches, after Wills had captained, coached and managed the Aboriginal players for a time.

"Wills lists the players in the team – it's 1871 he is writing this – and he's got half the team since deceased," Studham says.

"That's just five years after this first match and half of these guys are gone.

"That's scary because none of the white (MCC) guys have gone, yet the health and mortality have half of (Aboriginal) them gone.

"One of the guys goes on that tour dies on tour.

"A couple of the guys picked dies before they even get on tour.

"It is really scary and it really is sad."