In November 1832 the Cape Town Cricket Club was formally constituted with a committee, a subscription roll and a leased ground at Green Point Common. The founding was the institutional successor to the garrison cricket that had been documented in 1819 and is the foundation entry of organised civilian cricket in South Africa. Cape Town CC is one of the oldest constituted cricket clubs in the southern hemisphere.
Cricket in Cape Town had been documented since 1819 as a garrison sport. By 1832 the colony's civilian and merchant population was sufficient to support an organised club. The November founding meeting — held at the Cape Town Commercial Hall — drew about thirty subscribers. The Green Point Common ground was leased from the colonial authorities. The club's first formal fixture, against the garrison, was played in January 1833.
1819
First documented cricket at Cape Town
Nov 1832
Cape Town Cricket Club founded
Jan 1833
First formal fixture played
1864
Western Province Cricket Club founded
1889
South Africa's first Test match
Cape Town CC continued through the nineteenth century. The Western Province Cricket Club, founded in 1864, eventually superseded it as the colony's leading institution; both contributed to the foundation of South African Test cricket in 1889.
The founding of organised civilian cricket in South Africa.
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1831-03-09
On 9 March 1831 Thomas 'Old Everlasting' Walker — the most famous defensive batter of the Hambledon school and one of the last surviving regulars of the great 1780s side — died at Churt, Surrey, in his early seventies. With Beldham still alive but long retired, Walker's death effectively closed the personal lineage of Hambledon cricket as a presence in the contemporary game.
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1831-11-05
On 5 November 1831 George Osbaldeston rode 200 miles on Newmarket Heath in 8 hours 42 minutes, using a string of relay horses, for a wager of 1,000 guineas. The ride was the most celebrated single sporting feat of the Regency era — repeating in equestrian form the 1818 pedestrian feat and confirming Osbaldeston as the most flamboyant amateur sportsman of his generation. He had been an MCC committee member since his 1828 reconciliation with Beauclerk.
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1831-06-25
The earliest documented cricket match at Christ's Hospital School — the historic 'Bluecoat' charity school in central London — was a house fixture played in the summer of 1831. Cricket had been informal at Christ's Hospital from the late eighteenth century; the 1831 match is the earliest preserved with a full account in the school's surviving records.