'Absolutely brilliant': Special touch added to Ashes shirts

It’s not much bigger than a 50-cent piece, but a new addition to the shirts of Australia’s Ashes players will be absolutely priceless for a small but immensely proud group of Australian cricketers.

The Test shirts of Australia’s men’s and women’s teams for their respective Ashes campaigns, starting with the women’s Test against England this week and continuing in the men’s series next month, will feature a piece of Indigenous artwork on the collar that has come to symbolise the recent growth of the Indigenous game.

Walkabout Wicketswas painted by Indigenous artist Fiona Clarke ahead of the 2016 Boxing Day Test to commemorate the anniversary of an iconic match featuring an Aboriginal XI at the MCG 150 years earlier.

The artwork so captured the imagination that is was then incorporated into the playing strips of the men’s and women’s Indigenous teams for their historic tour of England last year.

And it has now been added to the shirts of Australia’s senior teams for the latest chapter in the game’s most fabled rivalry, the Ashes against England.

"It may be a small gesture, but it’s quite significant," former Australia fast bowler Jason Gillespie, one of just two Indigenous Australians to play Test cricket, told cricket.com.au.