Samuel Morris (22 June 1855 in Hobart – 20 September 1931 in Albert Park, Victoria) was an Australian cricketer who played in 1 Test in 1885. He was the first black man to represent Australia and, apart from Andrew Symonds, is the only player of West Indian heritage to do so.
Morris was one of nine Australian Test players to make his debut in the Second Test of the 1884-85 series against England. Selectors were forced to choose an entirely new team after the eleven of the First Test refused to play over a dispute concerning payment of players. Morris took two wickets in the match, including English captain Arthur Shrewsbury, and made just fourteen runs (4 as an opener in the first innings, 10 not out in the second batting at number ten) as Australia lost by ten wickets.
His parents were West Indian and had traveled to Australia in the gold-rush years of the 1840s. He was born in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1855, but played his club cricket in Victoria for Melbourne's St Kilda club where he later became the groundsman before suffering from blindness in his later years.
Famous quotes containing the words samuel and/or morris:
“Do all that your mind inclines to. I am with you; as your mind is, so is mine.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 14:7.
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)