Allan Donald

South Africa·Bowler

South Africa's greatest fast bowler best remembered for the dramatic run-out mix-up with Lance Klusener in the 1999 World Cup semi-final.

20 incidents documented

Controversies & Incidents

🚨Explosive

Delhi Police Tap a Phone — How the Cronje Scandal Broke, April 2000

South Africa vs India

2000-04-07

On April 7, 2000, the Delhi police Crime Branch announced they had recordings of South African captain Hansie Cronje discussing match-fixing arrangements with London-based Indian bookmaker Sanjeev Chawla. The wiretap had been placed for an extortion case unrelated to cricket. A police officer's son recognised Cronje's voice on a tape brought home — and the biggest scandal in cricket history began.

#hansie-cronje#south-africa#india

⭐Serious

Lance Klusener — Player of the Tournament, 1999 World Cup

South Africa

1999-06-17

At the 1999 World Cup, Lance Klusener became one of cricket's great individual stories — 281 runs at an average of 140.50 and a strike rate of 122, plus 17 wickets at 20.58. He won four Player of the Match awards in nine matches. Yet South Africa exited at the semi-final stage in the famous Edgbaston tied semi.

#lance-klusener#south-africa#1999-world-cup

🔥Serious

1999 World Cup Semi-Final — Klusener's Agony and Allan Donald's Run Out

Australia vs South Africa

17 June 1999

South Africa's Lance Klusener hit two fours off successive balls to bring the scores level, but a catastrophic run out of Allan Donald off the last ball sent Australia through on net run rate in one of cricket's greatest ever finishes.

#world cup#1999#klusener

🏏Moderate

Allan Donald Run Out — 1999 World Cup Semi-Final

Australia vs South Africa

17 June 1999

Allan Donald was run out in the most dramatic fashion in the 1999 World Cup semi-final, but South Africa argued the initial call by the square leg umpire was premature.

#donald#klusener#run out

🔥Explosive

West Indies Players' Strike — Heathrow Sit-Down, November 1998

West Indies

1998-11-05

On November 5, 1998, West Indies' touring squad — heading to South Africa for their first post-apartheid tour — refused to board the connecting flight from London to Johannesburg. Captain Brian Lara and vice-captain Carl Hooper led nine players in a stand-off with the West Indies Cricket Board over allowances and tour fees. The team holed up at Heathrow's Excelsior Hotel for almost a week. The board sacked Lara and Hooper, then reinstated them, and the squad arrived in South Africa demoralised and unprepared. They lost the Test series 5-0.

#west-indies#brian-lara#carl-hooper

⭐Serious

'You Guys Are History' — Devon Malcolm's 9 for 57 vs South Africa, 1994

England vs South Africa

1994-08-20

On August 20, 1994, after being struck on the helmet by a Fanie de Villiers bouncer, England's Devon Malcolm walked back to his bowling mark, said 'You guys are history' to the South African slip cordon, and proceeded to take 9 for 57 — the sixth-best bowling figures in Test history at the time.

#devon-malcolm#england#south-africa

⭐Serious

South Africa's First Test Back — Bridgetown, April 1992

West Indies vs South Africa

1992-04-18

On April 18-23, 1992, South Africa played their first Test match in 22 years — against the West Indies in Bridgetown. They lost by 52 runs after collapsing from 122/2 to 148 all out chasing 201. Curtly Ambrose took 6/34 in the second innings; Barbadian fans largely boycotted the game in protest at Anderson Cummins' omission.

#south-africa#west-indies#barbados

🏏Explosive

22 Runs Off 1 Ball — 1992 World Cup Rain Rule

England vs South Africa

22 March 1992

A farcical rain rule calculation left South Africa needing 22 runs off 1 ball in the World Cup semi-final, robbing them of a realistic chance of reaching the final.

#world cup#rain rule#south africa

⭐Serious

South Africa's Cricket Return — Eden Gardens, November 1991

India vs South Africa

1991-11-10

On November 10, 1991, South Africa returned to international cricket after 22 years of apartheid-era isolation, playing India in front of more than 90,000 spectators at Eden Gardens, Calcutta. The Proteas lost by three wickets — but cricket's lost nation was back.

#south-africa#india#calcutta

⭐Moderate

Jim Laker 19 for 90 — The Greatest Bowling Match in Cricket, 1956

England vs Australia

1956-07-31

On 31 July 1956 at Old Trafford, Jim Laker took 10 for 53 in Australia's second innings to finish with 19 for 90 in the match — figures that stand alone in Test history. His 9 for 37 in the first innings was followed by all ten in the second. England won by an innings and 170 runs. Laker's match analysis remains the best in any first-class match anywhere; only Anil Kumble has since matched the ten-wicket innings.

#england#australia#jim-laker

😂Serious

The Idris Baig Affair — Water-Pouring at Peshawar, 1956

Pakistan vs MCC

1956-02-12

During an MCC under-25 tour match at Peshawar in February 1956, captain Donald Carr and several team-mates donned masks, abducted Pakistani umpire Idris Baig from his hotel and dragged him to Billy Sutcliffe's room where they doused him with buckets of water. The incident, born of frustration with Baig's umpiring, almost ended the tour and triggered demonstrations on the streets of Peshawar.

#pakistan#mcc#idris-baig

⭐Serious

Barnes 234, Bradman 234 — The Identical-Score 405 at Sydney, December 1946

Australia v England

1946-12-17

On 17 December 1946 at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Sid Barnes and Don Bradman put together 405 for the fifth wicket against England — and were both out for exactly 234, an identical-score coincidence Barnes later admitted was deliberate. The stand remains the world Test record for the fifth wicket, was at the time the highest partnership for any wicket in Ashes cricket, and helped Australia to an innings win that effectively decided the post-war series.

#sid-barnes#bradman#scg

⭐Mild

Wally Hammond's 905 Runs — 1928-29 Ashes Record

Australia v England

1929-03-08

In the 1928-29 Ashes Wally Hammond scored 905 runs in five Tests at an average of 113.12 — at the time, and for the next 60 years, the most by any batsman in any Test series. England won the series 4-1 under Percy Chapman.

#wally-hammond#ashes#1928-29

⭐Mild

Lancashire's Three Consecutive Championships — 1926-28

Lancashire and English County Championship

1928-08-31

From 1926 to 1928 Lancashire won three consecutive County Championships — the only three-in-a-row by any non-Yorkshire county between the wars — built around the Australian fast bowler Ted McDonald, captain Leonard Green, and a settled batting order led by the Tyldesleys.

#lancashire#county-championship#1926

⭐Mild

Warwick Armstrong's 'Big Ship' Crew — Cricket's First Ashes Whitewash, 1920-21

Australia v England

1921-03-01

When Warwick Armstrong's Australians sealed the fifth Test on 1 March 1921, they had become the first side in cricket history to win an Ashes series 5-0. Captained from the front by the 22-stone all-rounder nicknamed 'The Big Ship', a side rebuilding from the Great War crushed Johnny Douglas's England in every match of a series that would not be matched in scale until Ricky Ponting's team in 2006-07.

#ashes#australia#england

⭐Mild

Gregory and McDonald — The Pace Pair Who Broke England, 1921

Australia v England

1921-08-15

Through the summer of 1921 Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald operated as the most feared new-ball pair the world had yet seen. Together they took 46 wickets in the five Tests as Warwick Armstrong's Australians won the series 3-0, and inspired a decade of English broadcasting and journalism that would obsess about pace until Larwood's Bodyline answer arrived ten years later.

#jack-gregory#ted-mcdonald#pace-bowling

🔥Mild

Hesketh-Prichard, the Fast-Bowling Evangelist — His 1910s Campaign

England

1913-04-01

Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard, the amateur fast bowler, big-game hunter and Country Life writer, spent the 1910s in a near-evangelical public campaign to revive English fast bowling — arguing that the game was being dominated by spin and slow bowlers and that England would lose Tests until it produced new pacemen.

#hesketh-prichard#fast-bowling#england

⭐Serious

South Africa's First Test — Port Elizabeth, 1889

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#first-test#1889

⭐Moderate

The Currie Cup — South Africa's First-Class Foundation, 1889

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.

#currie-cup#south-africa#1889

⭐Moderate

Major Warton's Tour — How the First English Side Got to South Africa, 1888-89

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.

#major-warton#south-africa#1888-89