South Africa v England
1889-03-12
On 12-13 March 1889, at St George's Park, Port Elizabeth, South Africa became the third Test-playing nation. England, captained by C Aubrey Smith — later a Hollywood actor — won by 8 wickets inside two days. Smith took 5 for 19 in the first innings, his only Test wickets; Owen Dunell, the South African captain, became the first man to lose a Test toss for South Africa.
South Africa v England
1889-03-25
On 25-26 March 1889 at Newlands, Lancashire's Johnny Briggs took 7 for 17 and 8 for 11 against South Africa — match figures of 15 for 28, of which 14 were bowled and one lbw. It set a new Test record for match wickets that lasted until SF Barnes in 1913, and remains one of the most economical 15-wicket hauls in any form of cricket.
England (cricket) / Hollywood (film)
1889-03-12
C Aubrey Smith captained England in his only Test in 1889, took 5 for 19, and never played another international. Forty-three years later, the same man — now a Hollywood character actor in his seventies — founded the Hollywood Cricket Club, persuaded Boris Karloff and David Niven to play, and lived in Beverly Hills until his death in 1948. The arc from St George's Park to Beverly Hills is one of cricket's strangest biographies.
England / Australia
1889-04-15
Wisden's 1889 Almanack inaugurated what became the most prestigious individual award in cricket: the Cricketers of the Year. The first list — picked by editor Charles Pardon to mark the bowler-dominated 1888 summer — named six Great Bowlers: George Lohmann, Bobby Peel, Johnny Briggs (England), Charlie Turner, JJ Ferris and Sammy Woods (Australia). Between them they had taken 1,272 wickets in 1888 at 11.89 apiece.
South African colonies
1889-04-05
Sir Donald Currie, the Scottish-born shipping magnate who funded England's 1888-89 tour of South Africa, donated a trophy at the end of the trip for an inter-colonial cricket competition. The first Currie Cup was contested in 1889-90 — a single-match competition won by Kimberley over Transvaal. It became the foundational competition of South African first-class cricket.
England v South Africa
1889-03-12
Charles Aubrey Smith was a tall fast-medium Sussex amateur with one of the strangest run-ups in cricket history — a sweeping curve that started from deep mid-off or even from behind the umpire and brought him in at the crease from an unexpected angle. WG Grace remarked it was 'rather startling when he suddenly appears at the bowling crease'. In March 1889, Smith captained the first English side to play a Test in South Africa, took 5/19 in the first innings of that Test, and remains the only player ever to captain England in his one and only Test appearance.
South Africa v England
1889-03-26
On 26 March 1889 at Newlands, Cape Town, Augustus Bernard Tancred batted through a South African innings of 47 all out, finishing 26 not out as Johnny Briggs took 8 for 11 around him. The performance was modest in raw terms but historic: Tancred became the first batsman to carry his bat through a completed innings in Test cricket. His unbeaten 26 out of 47 remains the lowest score by anyone carrying their bat through a Test innings, more than 130 years later.
Australia v England
1888-02-10
On a Sydney pitch reduced to a glue-pot by rain, George Lohmann and Bobby Peel bowled Australia out for 42 in the second innings of the only Test of the 1887-88 tour — Lohmann 5 for 17, Peel 5 for 18, the pair unchanged through the innings. The match also produced Charlie Turner's 7/43 at the other end of the same wet stage and a 126-run England win.
England v Australia
1888-07-17
On 17 July 1888, the second day of the first Test at Lord's, 27 wickets fell — a single-day Test record that has stood for 138 years. England were dismissed for 53 in 55 minutes, Australia for 60, England for 62 — three full innings inside one day's play, on a Lord's pitch baked then drenched. Australia won the match by 61 runs.
Australia (touring England)
1888-08-31
On the 1888 Australian tour of England, Charlie Turner and JJ Ferris bowled essentially unchanged through innings after innings, taking 534 of the 663 wickets that fell to the Australians across the summer. Turner's 283 first-class wickets that season was a record for any bowler in any English summer. The pair were named in the inaugural Wisden Cricketers of the Year list in 1889.
Australia
1888-09-30
Charles Thomas Biass Turner, nicknamed 'The Terror', was the outstanding bowler of the late 1880s. In the wet English summer of 1888 he took 283 first-class wickets at 11.27 — a tally only ever bettered by Tom Richardson in 1895 and Tich Freeman in 1928 and 1933. The previous Australian summer he had become the only bowler ever to take 100 first-class wickets in a single Australian season. He reached 50 Test wickets in only six matches (still the record) and was the second bowler in history to 100 Test wickets, behind Johnny Briggs by three days in 1895.
Australia / England (one tour)
1888-09-30
John James Ferris was the left-arm partner who shared the new ball with Charlie Turner through the great Australian bowling years of the late 1880s. He took 61 Test wickets in only 9 matches at 12.70 apiece — one of the best averages in Test history — was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1889, and later qualified for England by residence and toured South Africa as an Englishman in 1891-92, taking 13 wickets in his only Test for his second country. He died of typhoid fever in Durban in 1900, aged 33.
R.G. Warton's XI (England) v South African sides
1888-12-01
The first English cricket tour of South Africa was organised not by MCC or any official body but by a retired British army officer, Major Robert Gardner Warton, working with two Cape Town agents (Billy Simkins and William Milton) and underwritten by the shipping magnate Sir Donald Currie. Warton went to England in 1888 to recruit professionals; the resulting team — captained by the amateur C. Aubrey Smith — sailed in November and played the matches that were later, in 1903, given retrospective Test status as South Africa's first Tests.
Australia
1888-08-31
Alexander Chalmers 'Alec' Bannerman, younger brother of Test cricket's first centurion Charles Bannerman, played 28 Tests for Australia between 1879 and 1893 as the most determined defensive opener of the 19th century. Where Charles attacked, Alec stonewalled. He never made a Test century in 50 innings; his highest was 94. His patience was a moral asset to a young Test side that could not yet match the depth of England's batting.
Yorkshire / England
1888-08-31
Bobby Peel of Yorkshire was the second great left-arm spinner of his county after Edmund Peate, and quickly the better of the two. He made his first-class debut in 1882, became Yorkshire's first-choice slow left-armer when Peate was sacked for drunkenness in 1887, took 100 wickets a season for the next decade and was named one of the first six Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1889. By 1888 he was already England's frontline spinner, sharing 27-wicket days with Lohmann at Lord's against Australia.
Lancashire / England
1888-08-31
Johnny Briggs of Lancashire was the most engaging all-round cricketer of the 1880s — a popular fielder, a left-arm slow bowler who could turn the ball sharply, and a hard-hitting middle-order batsman with one Test century to his name (121 at Melbourne in 1885). He became the first bowler in Test cricket to take 100 wickets, in February 1895, and finished his career with 118 wickets at 17.75. He suffered an epileptic seizure during the Headingley Test of 1899, returned to play one further season, and died in Cheadle Royal Asylum in January 1902 aged 39.
Australia / Derbyshire (later)
1888-06-01
In September 1886, on his fifth tour of England, Fred 'The Demon' Spofforth married Phillis Marsh Cadman at Breadsall, Derbyshire. By 1888 the couple had returned to England permanently; Spofforth took a position in his father-in-law's tea importing business and began a second life as a Derbyshire-domiciled cricketer. He played for Derbyshire from 1889, captained them in 1890, and lived out the rest of his life in England, dying at Long Ditton in 1926 — the most famous Australian cricketer ever to settle in the country he had so often demolished.
England v Australia
1886-08-12
Surrey medium-pacer George Lohmann had played two Tests in 1886 with a single wicket to show for them. At The Oval in August he changed his life: 7 for 36 and 5 for 68 — match figures of 12 for 104 against Australia, with England winning by an innings and 217. The performance launched the bowler whose career Test average (10.75) is still the lowest for any bowler with 100+ Test wickets.
England (Notts)
1886-08-10
When asked who he would prefer as his batting partner, WG Grace replied simply, 'Give me Arthur' — meaning Arthur Shrewsbury of Nottinghamshire. Shrewsbury was the best professional batsman of the 1880s, the leader of the 1881 Notts strike, the co-organiser of three private tours of Australia, and Wisden Cricketer of the Year in the inaugural 1890 list (the second list, for batsmen). He killed himself in 1903 aged 47, after years of paranoid hypochondria.
Australia v England
1885-01-19
When the 1884 Australian touring side returned home and demanded 50% of the gate receipts for the second Test of the 1884-85 series at Melbourne, the Victoria Cricket Association refused. The result: nine of the eleven first-Test players boycotted; Australia fielded a side with eleven changes (only Sammy Jones and Tom Horan retained from earlier matches), all eleven men were Test debutants for that match alone, and England won by 10 wickets.
Surrey / England
1885-08-31
George Alfred Lohmann was the Surrey amateur-turned-professional who became, by 1888, the deadliest English bowler of his generation. He played his first county match in 1884, took 142 first-class wickets and 571 runs in 1885, and made his Test debut in 1886. He went on to take Test wickets at 10.75 — the lowest career average of any Test bowler in history with 50+ wickets — and to record a strike rate (34.1) that no one has ever bettered. By the end of the 1880s he was as central to England's bowling attack as Spofforth had been to Australia's.
England v Australia
1884-08-12
On 11-12 August 1884, Australia's captain Billy Murdoch became the first man to score a double century in Test cricket — 211 against England at The Oval, in 525 minutes off 525 deliveries with 24 fours. Australia made 551, then a Test record. England, in desperation, used all eleven players as bowlers; the wicketkeeper Hon Alfred Lyttelton, bowling underhand lobs with his pads on, finished with the best figures, 4 for 19.
England v Australia
1884-07-21
On 21-23 July 1884, Lord's hosted its first Test match. England, with the Lancashire amateur AG Steel scoring 148 — the first Test century at headquarters — beat Australia by an innings and 5 runs. From this match onwards, Lord's became the spiritual centre of England's home Test programme.
England v Australia
1884-08-13
Sent in at number 10 to register a protest at the batting order, Surrey amateur Walter Read responded by hammering 117 off 155 balls in 113 minutes — the only Test century by a number 10 batsman, set in 1884 and not equalled in 142 years. With William Scotton blocking from the other end, the pair added 151 to save England from defeat against Murdoch's Australians.
England v Australia
1884-07-10
Old Trafford became the second English ground to stage a Test on 10 July 1884 — and was promptly rained off for the entire first day, setting a Manchester precedent that has held for over 140 years. The match was eventually drawn after Australia had inched ahead on first innings. The Lancashire ground would go on to host more Ashes washouts than any other.
England (Bligh's XI) v Australia
1884-02-09
When the Hon Ivo Bligh's England party arrived at Rupertswood near Sunbury for Christmas 1882, the captain was introduced to Florence Rose Morphy, music teacher and companion to Lady Janet Clarke, mistress of the house. The Ashes urn that emerged from the festivities was presented partly by Florence; within a year she and Bligh were engaged, and on 9 February 1884 they were married at Rupertswood. The Ashes therefore originate not just from a Sporting Times joke but from one of cricket's only real love stories.
Australia v England
1883-01-19
On 19 January 1883 Billy Bates of Yorkshire took the first hat-trick by an England bowler in a Test match — McDonnell, Giffen and Bonnor in successive deliveries — on the way to match figures of 14 for 102 and an innings win for Bligh's team at the MCG. It remained the only Ashes hat-trick by an England bowler for the rest of the 19th century.
England v Australia
1882-08-29
Across two August days in 1882, Australia beat England by seven runs at The Oval in the only Test of the tour. Fred 'The Demon' Spofforth took 14 for 90 in the match — 7/46 in the first innings and 7/44 in the second — to bowl England out for 77 chasing only 85. Within hours The Sporting Times printed a mock obituary declaring that English cricket was dead and that 'the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.' The most famous trophy in the game was born from a satirical paragraph.
England v Australia
1882-08-29
Fred 'The Demon' Spofforth took 7 for 46 and 7 for 44 at The Oval in August 1882, match figures of 14 for 90 that bowled Australia to a 7-run win and gave birth to the Ashes legend. The second-innings spell — bowled in tandem with Harry Boyle — broke an England chase of just 85 and stood as the best match analysis in Test cricket for 31 years.
England v Australia
1882-09-02
Four days after Australia's 7-run win at The Oval, the satirical weekly The Sporting Times printed a 30-line mock obituary by Reginald Shirley Brooks announcing the death of English cricket and noting that 'the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.' The squib was meant for one Saturday's amusement and ended up giving cricket its most enduring trophy name.
England v Australia
1882-08-29
With England needing 10 to beat Australia at The Oval and the Cambridge amateur CT Studd waiting at the non-striker's end, Yorkshire professional Ted Peate took strike at number 11, swung at Harry Boyle and was bowled. Asked in the dressing room why he hadn't simply blocked and given Studd the strike, Peate is supposed to have replied, 'I couldn't trust Mr Studd.' The line — Yorkshire pro on Cambridge amateur — has outlived everyone involved.
England v Australia
1882-12-30
Six weeks after the Sporting Times mock obituary, the Hon Ivo Bligh sailed for Australia at the head of a private English team with the explicit, half-joking goal of bringing 'the Ashes' home. England lost the first Test at Melbourne, won the next two at Melbourne and Sydney to take the official series 2-1, and at the end of the tour Bligh was presented with a small terracotta urn that, decades later, became the most famous trophy in cricket.
England v Australia
1882-12-25
Sometime over Christmas and Easter 1882-83, at the Rupertswood estate of Sir William Clarke at Sunbury, near Melbourne, the Hon Ivo Bligh was presented with a small terracotta urn 10.5 cm high that was said to contain the ashes of a burnt bail. The presentation, initially a private joke during a country-house cricket match, eventually produced the most famous trophy in the sport.
England v Australia
1882-08-29
On the second morning of the 1882 Oval Test, with Australia's score at 114 in their second innings, young Sammy Jones wandered out of his crease to do some gardening — and WG Grace, ball in hand at point, threw down the stumps. Spofforth, watching from the pavilion, called Grace 'a bloody cheat' and reportedly stormed into the England dressing room with the line, 'this will lose you the match.' Two hours later he had taken 7 for 44 and Australia had won by 7 runs.
Australia
1882-08-29
Jack Blackham of Victoria stood up to the stumps even to the fastest Australian bowlers in the 1880s, in gloves Wisden later described as 'little more than gardening gloves'. He was the wicketkeeper in the inaugural 1877 Test, kept in 35 Tests through 1894, and effectively eliminated the long-stop position from cricket. Wisden called him 'the prince of wicket-keepers' — a title that has stayed attached to him for 140 years.
Australia / England (one Test)
1882-08-29
William Lloyd Murdoch captained Australia in 16 Tests through the 1880s, scored the first Test 200 (211 at the Oval in 1884), held the Test record score (153* against England in 1880) for several years, and was the architect of Australia's 7-run win at the Oval in 1882. He later (controversially) played one Test for England against South Africa in 1891-92.
England (Bligh's XI) v Australia
1882-12-25
What is actually inside the Ashes urn? For over a century the standard answer was 'a burnt cricket bail', but in 1998 the 8th Earl of Darnley's daughter-in-law claimed the contents were the burnt remains of a lady's veil, possibly belonging to Florence Morphy or Lady Janet Clarke. MCC, which has had the urn since 1927, has never officially confirmed either version. After a 2006-07 examination an MCC official said it was '95 per cent certain' the contents were a bail — leaving 5 per cent of cricket's most famous mystery still open.
Private English XI v Australia
1881-09-15
Through the 1880s, three Nottinghamshire and Sussex professionals — Alfred Shaw, Arthur Shrewsbury and James Lillywhite — organised three private English tours of Australia (1881-82, 1884-85, 1886-87) outside MCC channels. They paid their own players, kept the gate receipts, and demonstrated that professionals could run international cricket as a business. Their model prefigured Packer's World Series Cricket nearly a century later.
Nottinghamshire CCC v Captain Henry Holden (committee)
1881-06-01
In the summer of 1881 seven of Nottinghamshire's leading professionals — Alfred Shaw, Arthur Shrewsbury, Fred Morley, John Selby, William Barnes, Wilfrid Flowers and (briefly) Mordecai Sherwin — refused to play for the county after a dispute with the secretary, Captain Henry Holden, over fixtures, pay and the right to a guaranteed benefit. The strike crippled Notts' season, was the first major industrial action in English cricket, and laid the groundwork for the formal employment contracts that professionals would gradually win across the next two decades.
England vs Australia
1880-09-06
George Frederick Grace, the youngest of the three Grace brothers, played his only Test at the Oval in September 1880 — the first Test ever played in England. He scored 0 and 0 with the bat but took a famous running catch to dismiss George Bonnor. Two weeks later, on 22 September 1880, Fred Grace died of pneumonia, aged 29.
England v Australia
1880-09-06
On 6 September 1880, in the very first Test match played in England, the 32-year-old WG Grace opened the innings with his elder brother EM and went on to score 152 — the first Test century by an England batsman, on debut and on home soil. England won by five wickets. The Grace family's three brothers (WG, EM and GF) all played, the only time three brothers have appeared together in a Test match.
England v Australia
1880-09-22
George Frederick 'Fred' Grace, the youngest of the cricketing Grace brothers, played his only Test at The Oval in September 1880, took the most famous deep catch of the 19th century, and was dead of pneumonia two weeks later, aged 29. His joint appearance with WG and EM is the only time three brothers have played together in a Test; the family lost their youngest within a fortnight of the historic match.
Australia
1880-09-06
George Bonnor stood six feet six, weighed 17 stone and could throw a cricket ball further than any man of his era. The 'Bathurst Giant' played 17 Tests for Australia in the 1880s, hit a six measured at 164 yards out of the MCG, completed three runs from a single shot before being caught at the boundary, and is supposed to have smashed the Melbourne pavilion clock with one stroke. He was the era's tallest, heaviest, biggest-hitting Test cricketer.
Amateurs v Professionals
1880-07-05
Through the 1880s, English cricket maintained the strict separation of Gentlemen (amateurs, with initials before the surname) from Players (professionals, with initials after). The annual Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's drew vast crowds; behind it lay separate dressing rooms, separate gates, and the awkward fact that some 'amateurs' (notably WG Grace) earned more from cricket than any professional. The Notts strike of 1881 was the era's most public eruption of this contradiction.