Aboriginal team to play PM's side

A team of Aboriginal cricketers will play a side chosen by Australian Prime Minister John Howard in April to mark Australia's centenary of federation and help the reconciliation process between black and white Australians.

"As an aid to reconciliation, staging sporting events particularly in our national sport is a very, very important and symbolic gesture," Howard told reporters at the fifth Test match between Australia and the West Indies.

Howard said the game, the brainchild of Geoff Clark, the chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, would be held in Canberra on April 5.

Although an Aboriginal team toured England in 1868, well before the first white team, less than handful of cricketers with Aboriginal blood have played for Australia.

Clark said he hoped the game would become a regular fixture on the Australian cricket calendar.

"To include Aboriginal people after a century of omission from the game is about time," he said.

Mail Cricket Editor