The MCC team, under the captaincy of JWHT Douglas, departed for Australia on 18th September 1920; the team travelled by train from St Pancras station to Tilbury at 10.30am and sailed later that morning on the Orient liner Osterley.....

The tour was the first to have Test status after the First World War.

It followed tours by the Australian Imperial Forces cricket team which played a number first-class matches in England, South Africa and Australia immediately after the war. The last Ashes series had been the 1912 Triangular Tournament held in England that year.

Although the tourists were relatively successful in their first-class matches against the Australian state teams, losing only one, the Test series "resulted, as everyone knows, in disaster" and England became the first team ever to lose every match in a five-Test series.

Wisden commented that the chief cause of England's failure was the bowling, because all of the bowlers used were expensive and recorded high averages. Much has been made of Australia's ability to recover from the effects of the war more quickly than England and Wisden commented that "English cricket had not had time to regain its pre-war standard

Source:  The Old P&O