Sam Konstas lit up the MCG with his audacious ‘ramp’ shots in the fourth Test against India. But Johnny ‘Unaarrim’ Mullagh, Australia’s first Indigenous sporting hero was ramping 150 summers ago.

“Dropping on one knee to a fast rising ball, he would hold his bat over his shoulder and parallel to the ground,” wrote historian DJ Mulvaney of the man whose name adorns the medal that will be awarded to the best player of the Boxing Day Test, in a new edition of his book Cricket Walkabout. “The ball would touch the blade, and shoot high over the wicket-keeper’s head to the boundary.”

The fifth Johnny Mullagh Medal will be awarded today as a tribute to the legendary star of the Aboriginal side that toured England in 1868 – the first touring team to represent Australia on the world stage.

Mullagh was a fierce advocate of Aboriginal rights and refused to live on the state-controlled reserves the team came home to. But despite Mullagh blazing the trail, Indigenous representation at top levels of Australian cricket remains disappointingly slight. Since Australia’s first Test in 1880, just eight Indigenous cricketers have represented Australia internationally across all formats.

It is a curious anomaly given the predominance of First Nations stars in the AFL and NRL.

Inducting Mullagh into the Cricket Hall of Fame in 2021, Cricket Australia CEO Nick Hockley said: “Johnny Mullagh represents his entire team and the special place they have in cricket’s history,” he said. Special but also shameful. “Mullagh and the 1868 team’s story is one of resilience and triumph, as well as discrimination and tragedy.”

The Mullagh Medal is a recreation of the belt buckle the Jardwadjali man wore on the 1868 tour where he played 45 of 47 matches on tour, scoring the most runs (1698 at 23.65) and claiming the second-most wickets (245 at 10). The MCG is the right place to honour him because on Boxing Day 1866 Mullagh played in the third cricket match ever played there, for an Aboriginal and TW Wills XI against Melbourne Cricket Club.

Since its inception in 2019, the most popular winner of the Mullagh Medal was Scott Boland, a Gulidjan man honoured in 2021 for a Boxing Day debut in which he took 6-7 against England. Last week, Boland lent his name to a Cricket Victoria scholarship empowering future Indigenous leaders with a “commitment to providing the next generation of Indigenous students and athletes with the opportunities they need.”

In 2018, Boland and brother Nick were part of a commemorative tour of the UK by Indigenous cricketers celebrating the 1868 pioneers. Captained by allrounder Dan Christian – who came within a whisker of a Test debut in the 2011 Boxing Day Test – each squad member wore the name of an 1868 player on their shirt. The Bolands represented the brothers Johnny Cuzens (Yellanach) and Mosquito (Grongarrong).

In November, Boland wrote a foreword to Cricket Walkabout and backed Yellanach’s descendent Ashley Cuzens’ demand for Lord’s to repatriate artefacts from the 1868 tour. “Get that mob at Lord’s to bring ‘em over here and put them in the ‘G,” Cuzens implored. The widening call for greater recognition of the 1868 side was central to Wurundjeri elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin’s Welcome to Country on Thursday.

Jason Gillespie, a proud Kamilaroi man, has fought for better Indigenous cricket pathways since the first of his 71 Tests in 1996. “I was the 370th Australian Test cricketer, the 127th ODI player and I was raised on stories of Indigenous sport stars but I had no idea I was the first Indigenous man to play a Test,” he tells the Guardian.

Unlike Boland, who didn’t discover his bloodline until his 20s, Gillespie was always aware of his Indigenous blood. “I always knew, it just came to the public late,” he says. “My father Neil worked in the Aboriginal legal rights movement for many years. My brother Rob is still in that field. We’re Indigenous – it’s who we were, who we are.

“Once it dawned on me, I knew the significance,” says Gillespie. “But I didn’t feel any responsibility or obligation to be a role model. I knew my talent was to bowl a cricket ball very bloody fast. If I could do that to the best of my ability every time I took the field, playing hard but fair, I’d set a good example and inspire others.”

Gillespie wasn’t the first Indigenous Australian Test cricketer. That honour belongs to Faith Tinnipha Thomas, an Adnyamathanha fast bowler who won a baggy green in 1958. Until the 2019 selection of Ashleigh Gardner she was the only one. In 2021, Kamilaroi woman Hannah Darlington debuted against India in ODI and T20 cricket.

Gillespie resigned this month as coach of Pakistan’s Test team despite leading them to a series victory over England. But not before implementing a blueprint he says could easily work for the next generation of Indigenous cricketers. “Recognise their story and the fundamentals of who they are and what they stand for, their strength and courage, and integrate that into the fabric of the team and the cricket community.”