South Africa, West Indies, England
10 March 2026
South Africa and West Indies stranded in India 8-11 days after T20 WC 2026 while England departed in 48 hours, sparking ICC bias claims.
India vs England
24 February 2021
The third Test between India and England at the newly rebuilt Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad ended inside two days, with 30 wickets falling on a pitch that turned sharply from the first session.
ECB / English Cricket
21 July 2021
The ECB's creation of 'The Hundred,' a 100-ball competition with new rules and city-based franchises, divided English cricket, with critics arguing it undermined the county system and was a solution to a problem that didn't exist.
England vs India
12 July 2014
An alleged physical altercation between Ravindra Jadeja and James Anderson in the players' tunnel at Trent Bridge led to charges, counter-charges, and a messy ICC hearing that satisfied nobody.
India, Australia, England vs Rest of Cricket World
8 February 2014
India, Australia, and England pushed through a radical ICC restructuring that gave them a vastly disproportionate share of revenue and governance power, undermining smaller cricketing nations.
England vs India
17 July 2014
Virat Kohli and James Anderson had intense verbal exchanges throughout the 2014 series in England, with Kohli accusing Anderson of being abusive and disrespectful.
Australia vs England
2010-11-28
Graeme Swann's 'Sprinkler' dance became England's signature celebration during the 2010-11 Ashes, infuriating Australians and delighting England fans.
England vs Various
2006-03-01
England spinner Monty Panesar became famous for his spectacularly poor fielding, with his attempts to stop the ball providing more entertainment than many batsmen.
England vs Zimbabwe (forfeited)
13 February 2003
England refused to play their 2003 World Cup group match in Harare, Zimbabwe, citing security and political concerns related to the Mugabe regime, forfeiting crucial points that contributed to their early elimination.
England vs Various
1997-01-01
Phil 'The Cat' Tufnell was so bad at fielding that his nickname was ironic — he earned it for his ability to sleep anywhere, not for his agility.
England vs India
1996-06-22
On June 22, 1996, Sourav Ganguly (131) became only the third batter to score a Test hundred on debut at Lord's, while Rahul Dravid fell five short of a debut century with 95. The pair added 94 for the fifth wicket — the first chapter in a partnership that would underpin Indian cricket for the next 15 years.
Zimbabwe vs England
1996-12-22
The first Test between Zimbabwe and England at Bulawayo in December 1996 ended in a draw with the scores level — the first ever in Test history. Coach David 'Bumble' Lloyd, frustrated by Zimbabwe's defensive tactics, told a press conference 'we flippin' murdered em'. He was reprimanded by the ECB.
West Indies vs England
1994-04-18
On April 18, 1994, Brian Lara hooked Chris Lewis to the leg-side boundary to move from 365 to 375, breaking Sir Garfield Sobers' Test batting record that had stood since 1958. The 24-year-old left-hander batted nearly 13 hours and faced 538 deliveries before edging Andy Caddick to wicketkeeper Jack Russell.
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.
England vs South Africa
23 July 1994
England captain Mike Atherton was caught on camera applying dirt from his pocket to the ball during the Lord's Test against South Africa, leading to a fine and a crisis of confidence.
England vs Pakistan
1992-08-22
During Pakistan's 1992 tour of England, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis took 41 wickets between them with reverse-swing bowling that English batters and tabloid press could not understand. Pakistan won the series 2-1; English newspapers accused them of ball-tampering and the row poisoned England-Pakistan relations for a decade.
Pakistan vs England
1992-03-25
On March 25, 1992, Pakistan beat England by 22 runs at the MCG to lift their first cricket World Cup. Imran Khan's 72 and Wasim Akram's match-defining all-round performance (33 with the bat, 3/49 with the ball, including the wickets of Lamb and Lewis with consecutive deliveries) sealed it. Imran retired immediately afterwards.
England vs India
1990-08-14
On August 14, 1990, a 17-year-old Sachin Tendulkar scored an unbeaten 119 to save the Old Trafford Test for India. It was his first international century — the start of a tally that would grow to 100 across formats. He shared an unbroken 160-run seventh-wicket stand with Manoj Prabhakar.
England, Australia
1989-06-08
After 26 Tests without a hundred, Steve Waugh made an unbeaten 177 at Headingley in the first Ashes Test of 1989, kicking off a series in which he averaged 126.50 and announcing himself as the next great Australian batsman.
England, West Indies
1988-06-04
On a damp Old Trafford pitch in 1988, Malcolm Marshall produced what many of his peers consider his masterpiece — 7 for 22 in 18.3 overs to bowl England out for 93.
Pakistan, England
1987-12-09
Days before the Mike Gatting-Shakoor Rana finger-pointing row, Chris Broad refused to leave the crease for over a minute after being given out caught behind, an incident that helped poison the 1987 Faisalabad Test.
England, Australia
1987-11-08
Cruising at 135 for 2 chasing 254 in the 1987 World Cup final, Mike Gatting attempted a reverse sweep off Allan Border's first ball, gloved it to wicketkeeper Greg Dyer, and triggered the collapse that lost England the World Cup.
England, West Indies
1986-04-15
Eighteen months after the 1984 Blackwash, West Indies repeated the 5-0 in the Caribbean, this time with the debutant Patrick Patterson making the Sabina Park pitch genuinely terrifying for England's batsmen.
West Indies, England
1986-02-21
Replacing the rested Michael Holding at Sabina Park in February 1986, Patrick Patterson took 4 for 30 and 3 for 44 on his Test debut on what Graham Gooch later called 'the only pitch I have ever feared for my life on'.
England, New Zealand
1986-08-21
After admitting in the Mail on Sunday to having smoked cannabis, Ian Botham was banned for 63 days by the TCCB in May 1986 — and came back at The Oval in August to take a wicket with his first ball and pass Dennis Lillee's world Test wicket record.
England, West Indies
1984-08-13
Clive Lloyd's West Indies became the first touring side to win every Test of a five-match series in England, sweeping the home team 5-0 in a result that was instantly nicknamed the 'Blackwash'.
England, West Indies
1984-07-12
With his left hand encased in a plaster cast after a double fracture, Malcolm Marshall came out to bat one-handed at Headingley, helped Larry Gomes to a century, then took 7/53 to win the Test.
England, West Indies
1984-07-02
Set 342 in 78 overs by David Gower's declaration, Gordon Greenidge made an unbeaten 214 at better than a run a ball to win the Lord's Test for West Indies with two overs to spare.
England, Sri Lanka
1984-08-23
Eighteen-year-old Aravinda de Silva made his Test debut for Sri Lanka at Lord's in August 1984 in a one-off Test that, despite Sri Lanka's defensive draw, signalled the arrival of a generational talent.
England, Sri Lanka
1984-08-23
Opener Sidath Wettimuny made 190 over more than ten hours at Lord's in August 1984 — Sri Lanka's first big individual Test innings and the platform for their declaration at 491.
Sri Lanka, England
1982-02-17
Sri Lanka played their inaugural Test match at the P. Saravanamuttu Stadium in Colombo, on 17 February 1982 — captain Bandula Warnapura's side fell to England by 7 wickets, but the match marked Sri Lanka's arrival as the eighth Test nation.
Sri Lanka, England
1982-02-17
Eighteen-year-old Arjuna Ranatunga walked out at Colombo to bat in Sri Lanka's first ever Test innings, scored a debut fifty, and started the career that would end with the 1996 World Cup.
England, South Africa
1982-03-01
Twelve England-eligible cricketers led by Graham Gooch flew secretly to South Africa in March 1982 for an unauthorised 'SAB English XI' tour, prompting the TCCB to impose three-year international bans on the entire squad.
England, South Africa
1982-03-15
Geoff Boycott, then 41 and one of England's leading run-scorers, joined the SAB rebel tour to South Africa in March 1982 — the three-year ban that followed effectively ended his Test career.
England, Australia
1981-07-21
Forced to follow on and at one stage 500-1 against by the Ladbrokes board, England were rescued by Ian Botham's 149 not out and Bob Willis's 8 for 43 to win a Test no team has ever logically come back from.
England, Australia
1981-07-30
Set just 151 to win, Australia were cruising at 105 for 4 when Mike Brearley persuaded a reluctant Ian Botham to bowl. Twenty-eight balls and one run later Botham had taken 5 for 1 and Australia had collapsed to 121 all out.
England, Australia
1981-08-15
After Headingley and Edgbaston, Ian Botham completed his 1981 trilogy with 118 at Old Trafford — six sixes off Dennis Lillee and Terry Alderman, and a hundred from 86 balls that many called the greatest Ashes innings ever played.
England, Australia
1981-07-07
After making a pair at Lord's and presiding over a 12-Test winless captaincy run, Ian Botham resigned the England captaincy minutes before the selectors were going to sack him.
England vs Various
1981-07-21
Ian 'Beefy' Botham's off-field escapades were as legendary as his on-field heroics, making him cricket's original rock star.
West Indies vs England
23 June 1979
Vivian Richards' 138 not out off 157 balls and Collis King's 86 from 66 balls in a 139-run fifth-wicket partnership took West Indies to 286/9 in the 1979 Prudential World Cup final at Lord's. England, in reply, were dismissed for 194 — the chase undone by the slow-batting opening pair of Geoffrey Boycott (57 from 105 balls) and Mike Brearley (64 from 130). West Indies retained the World Cup with a 92-run victory.
Australia vs England
12-17 March 1977
The Centenary Test at the MCG in March 1977 commemorated 100 years since the first Test match at the same venue. Australia won by 45 runs — exactly the same margin as the 1877 result. Dennis Lillee took 6/26 and 5/139 across the two innings; Derek Randall made 174 in England's second-innings chase of 463; over 200 surviving Australian and English Test cricketers attended a celebration that became part of cricket's institutional memory.
Australia vs England
November 1974 - February 1975
Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson together took 58 wickets in the 1974-75 Ashes, intimidating Mike Denness's England side into a 4-1 series defeat. Thomson's slingshot action — peaked at speeds estimated above 95 mph in primitive on-field measurements — and Lillee's mature pace and cut produced one of the most one-sided fast-bowling assaults in Ashes history. Five England batters were forced to retire hurt across the series; Denness dropped himself for the fourth Test.
Australia vs England
5 January 1971
The first one-day international in cricket history was played at the MCG on 5 January 1971 as a hastily arranged consolation after the third Ashes Test was washed out for the first three days. Played over 40 eight-ball overs a side, Australia won by five wickets, John Edrich top-scored with 82 for England, and an estimated crowd of more than 46,000 watched a fixture neither board had originally planned to stage.
England vs India
19-24 August 1971
Bhagwath Chandrasekhar took 6 for 38 in 18.1 overs as India bowled England out for 101 on the third day of the Oval Test in August 1971, setting up a four-wicket Indian victory that delivered the country's first ever Test series win in England. The 1971 calendar year, including the earlier Caribbean series win, marked the moment Indian cricket became a touring power.
England vs West Indies
1969-07-10
Ray Illingworth was appointed England captain for the second Test against West Indies in July 1969, replacing the injured Colin Cowdrey. The appointment was supposed to be temporary — Cowdrey was expected to return — but Illingworth won the match and kept the captaincy for the next three years. He went on to win the 1970-71 Ashes in Australia, England's first Ashes win in Australia since 1954-55.
England vs West Indies
1969-08-22
England defeated West Indies 2-0 in the 1969 home series — their first series win over West Indies since 1957. The victory, under Ray Illingworth's newly assumed captaincy, was built on John Snow's pace bowling (seven wickets in the series), Boycott's batting (318 runs at 53.00) and Illingworth's own off-spin in helpful English conditions.
Pakistan vs England
1968-12-06
Colin Cowdrey of Kent became the first man in cricket history to play 100 Test matches when he appeared in England's first Test against Pakistan at Lahore in December 1968. Cowdrey was 35; his career had spanned 16 years, two continents and five different captains. His 100th cap was marked with a guard of honour from both teams and a telegram from the Queen.
England touring party
1968-01-07
England off-spinner Fred Titmus lost four toes on his left foot on 7 January 1968 when his foot was caught in the propeller of a motorboat during a rest-day excursion in Barbados. He was immediately taken to hospital, operated on, and — in a feat of recuperation that stunned his team — was bowling again within a year, his spinning action apparently unchanged by the loss of the toes.
England vs Australia
1968-08-22
A thunderstorm drenched The Oval on the final afternoon of the last Ashes Test of 1968, leaving England needing 352 to win — or, in practice, to survive to a draw on an unplayable wet surface. Groundstaff worked desperately to mop up the outfield, and England supporters helped dry the covers. When play resumed with 75 minutes left, Derek Underwood bowled Australia out for 125 to win the match by 226 runs and level the series 1-1.
England vs Australia
1968-06-01
John Snow of Sussex emerged in the 1968 Ashes as England's most genuinely fast bowler since Trueman's peak — a right-arm quick with a classical side-on action, real hostility and the ability to move the ball off the seam. He took 17 wickets in the 1968 series and 31 wickets in the 1970-71 Ashes, England's most famous series win in Australia in a generation.
England vs Australia
1968-08-23
Recalled at the last minute when Roger Prideaux withdrew with pleurisy, Basil D'Oliveira made 158 against Australia at the Oval on 23 August 1968 in the fifth Test. England won by 226 runs to draw the series 1-1 and retain the Ashes. The innings would, within weeks, force the MCC selectors into the decision that triggered the D'Oliveira Affair and South Africa's expulsion from international cricket.
England vs South Africa (cancelled)
28 August 1968
Basil D'Oliveira's selection for England's tour to South Africa in 1968 was refused by the apartheid government, leading to the tour's cancellation and eventually South Africa's expulsion from international cricket.
England vs Pakistan
1967-08-10
Alan Knott of Kent made his Test debut at The Oval against Pakistan in August 1967 and was immediately the best wicketkeeper England had seen since Godfrey Evans — a lower-order batsman of real quality and a keeper of outrageous agility. He would go on to take 269 dismissals and score 4,389 runs in 95 Tests, and is rated by many as the finest wicketkeeper-batsman England has produced.
England vs India and England vs Pakistan
1967-08-25
England enjoyed their most successful home season of the decade in 1967, winning both their series — 3-0 against India and 2-0 against Pakistan. Brian Close captained with aggression and tactical clarity; Geoff Boycott scored heavily; and England's bowling — Trueman in his last Test season, Higgs, Snow and Underwood — overwhelmed two sides that lacked experience of English conditions.
England vs India
1967-06-08
On 8 June 1967 at Headingley, Geoff Boycott carried his bat for an unbeaten 246 against India in 573 minutes. The selectors, watching the same innings from the Long Room, dropped him for the next Test. It was the only time in Test history that an unbeaten double-centurion was omitted from the next match for slow scoring.
Australia vs England
1966-02-11
On 11-12 February 1966 Victoria's Bob Cowper batted for twelve hours and seven minutes to score 307 against England at the MCG — then the highest score ever made by an Australian at home, and still the longest innings in Australian Test history. England's attack, containing Snow, Brown and Allen, bowled 138 overs at Cowper before he was finally out. Australia declared at 543 for 8 and the match was drawn.
England vs West Indies
1966-07-01
Garry Sobers's 1966 England tour was the greatest all-round series by any player in Test history up to that date. He scored 722 runs at 103.14 — including a double century at Headingley — and took 20 wickets with his three different bowling styles. West Indies won 3-1 and Sobers was on another level. One England selector described it as watching a man play a different sport from everyone else.
England vs West Indies
1966-06-16
Tom Graveney, recalled to the England side at 39 after a four-year absence — he had been dropped in 1962 for a county match in which his county had put him in without permission — scored 96 in England's only victory of the 1966 series at Lord's. His fluent strokeplay was in stark contrast to the struggle of younger colleagues, and his recall confirmed that county cricket's older generation still had things to teach the Test side.
England vs West Indies
1966-08-04
Derek Underwood of Kent made his Test debut at Headingley in August 1966, at 21, and immediately demonstrated the slow-medium left-arm bowling that would make him one of England's greatest post-war wicket-takers. On any surface with moisture in it, Underwood was unplayable; his 'Deadly Derek' nickname arrived within his first few county seasons and his Test career of 297 wickets at 25.83 would span seventeen years.
England vs New Zealand
1965-05-27
At Edgbaston in May 1965, England's most prolific batsman of the era spent 437 minutes making 137 against a weak New Zealand attack. Ken Barrington was dropped for the next Test as a public warning about scoring rates — a punishment unprecedented for a Test centurion. He returned a fortnight later, made 163 against the same opposition, and was never disciplined that way again.
England vs New Zealand
1965-07-09
On 9 July 1965 at Headingley, Surrey opener John Edrich became the first Englishman since Len Hutton to pass 300 in a Test innings, finishing 310 not out against New Zealand. He hit 52 fours and five sixes — 238 runs in boundaries, a Test record that has stood for more than sixty years. England declared at 546 for 4 and won by an innings.
Australia vs England
1965-12-10
Doug Walters made 155 on his Test debut against England at the Gabba on 10 December 1965 — the tenth Australian to score a debut century against the old enemy. He followed it with 115 in his second Test at Melbourne and another in the third at Sydney, becoming the first batsman in history to score centuries in his first three Ashes innings. He was 19 years old.
England vs Australia
1964-08-15
On 15 August 1964, at The Oval, Fred Trueman caught Neil Hawke at slip off his own bowling to become the first man in cricket history to take 300 Test wickets. The milestone had been expected for several matches; the moment itself was characteristically Trueman — a slip catch taken with ease off a delivery bowled in anger. His celebrated remark, that 'whoever gets the next lot'll be bloody tired', has echoed in cricket ever since.
England vs Australia
1964-06-04
Geoffrey Boycott of Yorkshire made his Test debut at Trent Bridge in June 1964, opening the batting against Neil Hawke and Graham McKenzie and scoring 48 — cautious, correct and utterly determined. It was the beginning of a Test career of 108 matches and 8,114 runs, the most polarising batting career England has produced.
India vs England
1964-02-08
On 8 February 1964 at Delhi's Feroz Shah Kotla, India captain Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi made an unbeaten 203 against England in the fourth Test — the first double century by an Indian batsman in India and the highest individual score by an Indian Test captain at the time. Pataudi was 23 and had been playing with one effective eye for two and a half years.
England vs Australia
1964-07-23
On 23-25 July 1964 at Old Trafford, Australian captain Bob Simpson made 311 against England — his first Test century, in his 30th Test. He batted for 762 minutes (just under 13 hours), faced 743 balls, and helped Australia retain the Ashes by ensuring there could be no defeat in the fourth Test. Only Don Bradman, among Australians, had previously scored a Test triple century in England.
England vs West Indies
1963-06-25
England needed 15 runs from the last eight-ball over to beat West Indies, with two wickets standing, Colin Cowdrey at the crease with a broken arm in plaster. Wes Hall bowled. Six runs came, two wickets fell. The match ended in a draw with England 9 wickets down. Cowdrey never had to face the last ball. It was the most famous finish at Lord's in the post-war era.
England vs West Indies
1963-08-26
Frank Worrell's 1963 England tour was his farewell as West Indies captain — and the finest series a West Indies side had ever played in England. West Indies won three Tests, drew one and lost one, outclassing England with Hall and Griffith's pace and Sobers, Kanhai and Worrell's batting. Worrell retired as captain after the tour, aged 39, and was knighted. He had transformed West Indian cricket in four years.
England vs West Indies
1963-06-25
On 25 June 1963 at Lord's, England number eleven Colin Cowdrey walked out to face Wes Hall with two balls to bowl, his left arm in plaster after Hall had broken it earlier in the day. Six runs were needed; one wicket stood. David Allen blocked the last two balls; Cowdrey did not have to face one. The Test was drawn — the most famous draw in English Test cricket history.
Australia vs England
1962-11-30
England's 1962–63 Ashes tour produced a 1–1 drawn series — a satisfactory result for the tourists, who retained the urn they had won in 1961 in Australia under the captaincy of Ted Dexter. The series was noted for Ken Barrington's grinding run accumulation, Fred Titmus's off-spin and David Allen's partnership with Trueman in the bowling. Australia, between the Benaud era and the Simpson-Lawry era, were in modest transition.
England vs Australia
1961-08-01
Chasing 256 to level the series, England were 150 for 1 and coasting — Dexter had made 76, May was settled — when Richie Benaud switched to bowling round the wicket into the footmarks outside off stump. In 25 balls he took 5 for 12, England collapsed to 201 all out, and Australia retained the Ashes by 54 runs. It was one of the most celebrated tactical switches in cricket history.
England vs South Africa
1960-06-25
On 25 June 1960, the 21-year-old South African Geoff Griffin took the first Test hat-trick ever recorded at Lord's — and was no-balled eleven times for throwing in the same match. After the Test ended early on the fourth day, the umpires no-balled him repeatedly in the exhibition match staged to fill the unused time, forcing him to complete the over underarm. He never played another Test.
South Africa vs England
1957-02-20
On 20 February 1957 at the New Wanderers in Johannesburg, Hugh Tayfield bowled unchanged through the final day to take 9 for 113 — South Africa's only nine-wicket Test innings haul to date. England, set 232 to win, fell 17 short. Tayfield's match figures of 13 for 192 levelled the series 2-2 and confirmed him as the finest off-spinner of his era.
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.
Australia vs England
1955-01-05
On the morning of 5 January 1955 at the MCG, Frank Tyson took 6 for 16 in 6.3 eight-ball overs to finish with 7 for 27 and bowl England to a 128-run win over Australia. The 50,000-strong crowd witnessed the fastest spell of the decade. Tyson, nicknamed 'Typhoon' on tour after his vicious pace, ended the third Test with a haul that turned the 1954-55 Ashes and remains the best by an England bowler in Australia since George Lohmann in 1886-87.
New Zealand vs England
1955-03-28
On 28 March 1955 at Eden Park, New Zealand were dismissed for 26 in their second innings against England — the lowest team total in the history of Test cricket. Bob Appleyard took 4 for 7 and Brian Statham 3 for 9 in 27 overs of disciplined seam and off-spin. The score eclipsed South Africa's 30 from 1924 and remains the record more than seventy years on.
England vs West Indies
1954-04-01
Fred Trueman's 1953-54 tour of the West Indies under Len Hutton was a personal disaster. The 22-year-old Yorkshire fast bowler clashed with hosts, opponents, umpires and even his own captain. At the end of the tour MCC withheld his Good Conduct Bonus — a public censure that probably cost him his place on the next two overseas tours and which Trueman resented for the rest of his life.
West Indies vs England
1954-02-26
On 26 February 1954 at the Bourda ground in Georgetown, the run-out of local hero Clifford McWatt — going for the single that would have brought his stand with John Holt to 100 — set off a barrage of bottles flung from the popular stands. Police fired tear gas. Captain Len Hutton refused to leave the middle, telling fielders he wanted a couple more wickets before the close.
England vs Pakistan
1954-08-17
On 17 August 1954 at The Oval, Pakistan beat England by 24 runs in only their inaugural Test tour to England. Fazal Mahmood took 6 for 53 and 6 for 46 — match figures of 12 for 99 — to bowl Pakistan to a victory that no Test nation had achieved on first visit before or since. Captain A. H. Kardar held aloft the smaller of cricket's two Caribbean replicas as Pakistan squared the series 1-1.
England vs Australia
1953-08-19
On 19 August 1953, England regained the Ashes for the first time since the 1932-33 Bodyline series by beating Australia by 8 wickets at The Oval. The Coronation summer of Queen Elizabeth II ended with Denis Compton sweeping Arthur Morris to the boundary at 5.53pm and Brian Johnston shouting 'It's the Ashes!' on BBC radio. The match closed twenty years of Australian dominance and crowned Len Hutton's first full year as captain.
England vs Australia
1953-06-30
Chasing 343 in the fourth innings at Lord's against Australia, England were 12 for 3 overnight on the fifth day. Trevor Bailey (71 in 257 minutes) and Willie Watson (109 in 346 minutes) batted nearly five and a half hours together to save the match. The stand of 163 on the final day kept the series level and laid the platform for England's eventual Ashes win at The Oval.
England vs India
1952-06-05
When MCC named Len Hutton to lead England in the first Test against India in June 1952, it broke a tradition that had governed English cricket for more than half a century — only amateurs led the national side. Hutton, a Yorkshire professional and the country's leading batsman, refused to relinquish his professional status to take the job. The decision marked a quiet but decisive crack in cricket's class divide.
England vs India
1952-07-19
On 17 July 1952 at Old Trafford, the 21-year-old Yorkshire fast bowler Fred Trueman tore through India's first innings to take 8 for 31 in 8.4 overs — at the time the best Test innings figures by an England fast bowler since Jim Laker's spin and the best by an out-and-out paceman in Test history. India were dismissed for 58 and 82 in a single day's play, beaten by an innings and 207 runs. Trueman's series haul of 29 wickets at 13.31 announced the most charismatic English fast bowler of his generation.
England vs India
1952-06-24
In the second Test of India's miserable 1952 tour of England, Vinoo Mankad almost single-handedly turned the match into a contest. After being recalled from Lancashire League cricket at the last moment, he scored 72 and 184, bowled 73 overs of left-arm spin in England's first innings to take 5 for 196, and still finished on the losing side. The Lord's Test became known forever as 'Mankad's Match'.
India vs England
1952-02-10
On 10 February 1952, in their 25th Test match, India recorded their first Test victory by beating England by an innings and 8 runs at Madras. Vinoo Mankad took 12 for 108 in the match — including 8 for 55 in the first innings — and Pankaj Roy and Polly Umrigar made centuries. The win came twenty years after India had been admitted to Test cricket and signalled the start of India's gradual climb into the top tier of the international game.
England vs West Indies
1950-06-29
On 29 June 1950, West Indies beat England by 326 runs at Lord's to record their first Test victory on English soil. Two unheralded spinners — Sonny Ramadhin (21) and Alf Valentine (20) — bowled the hosts out twice, taking 18 of the 20 wickets between them across the match. The triumph was sealed by Lord Beginner's calypso 'Cricket, Lovely Cricket', sung in the streets around the ground, and signalled the arrival of West Indies as a serious cricketing power.
England (cultural)
1950-04-22
Denis Compton's face on a poster, hair slick with Brylcreem, became the most recognisable image of British sport in the early 1950s. From 1949 he was paid by the County Chemical Company for the right to use his image, making him the first British cricketer to monetise his sporting reputation through commercial endorsement and the prototype for every subsequent sports brand deal.
Middlesex / England — Denis Compton
1947-09-13
In the dry, sunny English summer of 1947, Denis Compton scored 3,816 first-class runs at 90.85 with 18 centuries — both records that have stood for nearly 80 years and, with the modern fixture list, are widely considered unbreakable. His Middlesex partner Bill Edrich made 3,539 runs with 12 hundreds in the same summer, the second-highest of all time. Their batting carried Middlesex to the County Championship and lifted England to a 3-0 Test series win over South Africa. Compton was the Brylcreem Boy who turned austerity Britain back towards joy.
Dominions XI v England XI
1945-08-27
Three months after VE Day, Keith Miller hit 185 for a Dominions XI against England at Lord's, the highest score of an unforgettable post-war summer. He went from 61 not out overnight to 185 in 99 minutes on the third morning, striking seven sixes — including one over the press box that landed in the upper tier and another that cleared 170 metres into Block Q. Wisden called the match 'one of the finest ever seen' at headquarters; Miller's innings, more than any other in 1945, told English audiences that pre-war balance of power had been broken.
England v Australian Services XI
1945-05-19
Less than two weeks after VE Day, England and an Australian Services XI began a five-match Victory Test series at Lord's that ended 2-2 with one drawn after a final-day finish at Old Trafford on 22 August 1945. Played as celebration cricket and watched by 367,000 people across three grounds, the series re-introduced first-class cricket to a war-weary Britain, launched Keith Miller and confirmed Lindsay Hassett's quality as a captain. Although first-class only — neither board would grant Test status to Services teams — the series functioned as a public reopening of cricket and is the foundation of the modern English summer calendar.
Glamorgan / England (cricket); 1st Battalion Welsh Guards (military)
1944-08-05
Major Maurice Turnbull of the Welsh Guards, the Glamorgan and England all-round sportsman who had played nine Tests, captained Glamorgan for ten years and represented Wales at rugby and squash, was shot through the head by a sniper near the Normandy village of Montchamp on 5 August 1944. He was 38. His was the second Test cricketer death of the Normandy campaign and ended the most polished all-round sporting career produced by inter-war Welsh cricket.
Yorkshire / England (cricket); 1st Battalion Green Howards (military)
1943-07-31
Hedley Verity, the Yorkshire and England slow left-arm bowler whose 144 Test wickets at 24.37 included a record 15 wickets in a single Lord's Test, died on 31 July 1943 in a German-controlled hospital at Caserta after being severely wounded leading his platoon during the Allied invasion of Sicily. He was 38, and had not played first-class cricket since taking 7/9 against Sussex on the day Britain declared war. His death — alongside that of fellow Test cricketers Ken Farnes, Ross Gregory and Maurice Turnbull — became the most poignant individual loss cricket suffered in the Second World War.
Essex / England (cricket); No.12 OTU, RAF Chipping Warden (military)
1941-10-20
On the night of 20 October 1941, the England Test fast bowler Pilot Officer Ken Farnes was killed when his Vickers Wellington bomber crashed shortly after take-off from RAF Chipping Warden in Oxfordshire on a night-flying training exercise. Farnes was 30, had taken 60 wickets in 15 Tests between 1934 and 1939, and had been one of the few amateurs in the country considered the equal of the leading Australian fast bowlers. His death, just 11 weeks before Hedley Verity was wounded in Sicily, was the first major loss of an active England Test cricketer in the Second World War.
South Africa v England
1939-03-03
Played from 3 to 14 March 1939, the Durban 'Timeless Test' between South Africa and England ran for ten days and an aggregate of 43 hours and 16 minutes before being abandoned as a draw because the England team had to catch the boat home. With 1981 runs scored across four innings, it remains the longest Test ever played and effectively ended the timeless-Test format.
England v West Indies
1939-06-24
Across three days at Lord's in June 1939, George Headley scored 106 and 107 against England, becoming the first batsman to make two centuries in a Test at headquarters and reasserting the case that he was, ball for ball, Bradman's only post-Hammond peer. West Indies still lost by eight wickets, but Headley's twin centuries against Bowes, Copson and Verity remained for half a century the gold standard of West Indian Test batting.
England v Australia
1938-06-26
Captaining England in his first Ashes home Test in charge, Wally Hammond made 240 at Lord's in June 1938 — at the time the highest score by an England captain against Australia and an innings widely rated alongside his 336* at Auckland and his 251 at Sydney as the finest of his career.
England v Australia
1938-08-23
Across 13 hours and 20 minutes at The Oval in August 1938, the 22-year-old Yorkshire opener Len Hutton scored 364 — surpassing Bradman's 334 as the highest individual Test score and remaining the record for almost 20 years. England declared on 903 for 7; Australia, with Bradman injured and unable to bat, lost by an innings and 579 runs, the largest defeat in Test cricket. Hutton's mark is still the England record 87 years on.
England v Australia
1938-06-11
Following on 247 behind at Trent Bridge in June 1938, Stan McCabe played what Don Bradman would call the greatest innings he ever saw. With wickets falling at the other end, McCabe scored 232 in 235 minutes, the last 72 of those runs in just 28 minutes; he reached his double-hundred from 220 balls. Bradman called his team mates onto the pavilion balcony with the words, 'Come and look at this, you'll never see the like of it again.'
England v Australia
1938-08-20
The fifth and timeless Test of the 1938 Ashes at The Oval saw England score 903 for 7 declared — then the highest total in Test cricket — including Len Hutton's 364, the new world Test record. Australia, with Bradman injured and McCabe absent, replied with 201 and 123 to lose by an innings and 579 runs, the largest Test margin ever. The series finished 1-1 with two draws; Australia retained the Ashes by virtue of the previous series result.
Australia v England
1937-01-01
On a wet New Year's Day pitch at the MCG in 1937, with Australia 0-2 down in the series, Don Bradman batted himself at No. 7, sent his tail in first to absorb the sticky, and then made 270 over almost eight hours. It is the highest score made on a sticky wicket in Test cricket, the innings that turned the 1936-37 Ashes, and the one Wisden in 2001 voted the greatest Test innings of the 20th century.
England v India
1936-06-27
The 1936 Indian tour of England was captained by the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram — 'Vizzy' — a princely Test cricketer whose 8-Test record at 8.25 was earned through an absurd political appointment. Vizzy mismanaged a talented squad, alienated CK Nayudu, sent the brilliant Lala Amarnath home before the first Test on a discipline charge, and led India to a 2-0 series defeat. The tour became a byword for princely interference in Indian cricket and was cited for decades afterward in arguments for democratic selection.
Australia v England
1936-12-04
Don Bradman's first series as Australia's captain, in 1936-37 against Gubby Allen's England, began with two heavy defeats and a press chorus calling for his replacement. Bradman responded with 270 at the MCG, 212 at Adelaide and 169 at the MCG again, and Australia won the next three Tests to take the Ashes 3-2 — the only time in Test history a side has lost the first two Tests of a five-Test series and recovered to win it. The captaincy that English critics had questioned was suddenly the captaincy of a man who would lead Australia for the next 12 years.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.
England v Australia
1934-08-25
Recalled at the age of 47 for England's final Ashes Test in 1934 after a six-year Test absence, Frank Woolley made 4 and 0 and was bypassed for the squads that followed. The Oval Test marked the end of one of cricket's most graceful and prolific careers — 64 Tests, 58,969 first-class runs, all of them lit by what John Arlott later called 'a cool, almost insolent grace'.
England v Australia
1934-06-25
On the third and final day at Lord's in June 1934, Hedley Verity took 14 Australian wickets for 80 runs — the most by any bowler in a single day's Test cricket. Match figures of 15 for 104 gave England an innings victory, their only Lord's Ashes win of the entire 20th century. Bradman fell to him twice. The pitch had been rained on overnight; Verity's slow left-arm did the rest.
England v Australia
1934-07-21
Four years after his 334 on the same ground, Don Bradman returned to Headingley in July 1934 and made another triple — 304 in 430 minutes, sharing a then world-record fourth-wicket stand of 388 with Bill Ponsford. The Test was drawn, but the partnership was the high mark of the 1934 Ashes and proof that Yorkshire's Test wicket could be Bradman's personal property.
England v Australia
1934-08-18
Bill Ponsford's last Test innings was 266 at The Oval in August 1934, in a 451-run second-wicket stand with Don Bradman that won the Ashes for Australia and broke a world record that stood for 57 years. He walked off, raised his bat to a packed Oval, and retired from international cricket at 34.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
India v England
1933-12-17
On 17 December 1933 Lala Amarnath, batting at No. 5 on his Test debut, scored 118 to become the first Indian to make a Test century. The innings, made out of 219 added with C.K. Nayudu, came against an MCC attack of Nichols, Clark and Verity and was greeted by spectators tearing off jewellery to throw onto the field.
India / England
1933-04-02
On 2 April 1933 Ranjitsinhji — Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, England Test cricketer, leg-glance pioneer and the most famous Indian-born sportsman of his generation — died at Jamnagar at the age of 60. His death prompted a global cricket obituary and gave the Ranji Trophy, founded the next year, its name.
Australia v England
1933-01-14
On 14 January 1933 a Larwood bouncer felled Australian captain Bill Woodfull over the heart, the crowd nearly came over the fence, and that evening MCC manager Pelham Warner walked into the home dressing room to be told, 'There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket, the other is not.' The exchange leaked, the Adelaide Test became the diplomatic flashpoint of Bodyline, and the most famous sentence in Anglo-Australian cricket entered the language.
Australia v England
1933-01-16
Two days after Woodfull was struck over the heart, Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Bert Oldfield top-edged a Harold Larwood lifter into his own temple at Adelaide. The blow fractured his skull. Crucially, the field was conventional — not the leg-theory cordon — but the crowd did not know that. Mounted police lined the boundary as Oldfield was carried off; the Adelaide Test came within a single Australian Board decision of being abandoned.
Australia v England
1933-01-18
On 18 January 1933, two days after Bert Oldfield's skull was fractured in Adelaide, the Australian Board of Control cabled Lord's accusing England of 'unsportsmanlike' play. The MCC's reply offered to cancel the tour outright. Two more cables, the intervention of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons and a quiet retraction of the offending word were needed to keep the series alive. It is the most consequential cable exchange in cricket history.
Australia v England
1933-02-23
In the fifth Test at Sydney in February 1933, Harold Larwood broke two bones in his left foot bowling Bodyline at top pace — and Douglas Jardine kept him on the field, refusing to let him leave until Don Bradman was dismissed. Hobbling, Larwood went out to bat at No. 4 and made 98. He never played another Test. The Bodyline tour's spearhead was effectively retired by the captain who had unleashed him.
New Zealand v England
1933-04-01
On April Fool's Day 1933, Wally Hammond walked in at 56 for 1 at Eden Park and made 336 not out from the next 492 runs of England's innings. The score broke Bradman's 334 as the highest in Test cricket, took 318 minutes, and included 10 sixes — then a Test record. He still finished the two-match series with an average of 563. The match was drawn after only two days of play.
India v England
1933-12-15
On 15 December 1933 India played its first home Test, against Douglas Jardine's MCC at the Bombay Gymkhana Ground, a colonial members' club from which most Indians were excluded by membership rules. Lala Amarnath produced India's first Test century, 118 in 117 minutes on debut, and the new ground hosted only this single Test before the Brabourne Stadium took over Bombay's international cricket. England won by nine wickets; Indian Test cricket finally had a home address.
Australia v England
1933-02-28
Across the five Tests of the Bodyline series in 1932-33, Harold Larwood took 33 wickets at 19.51 — still the highest haul by an English fast bowler in an Ashes series in Australia. Including his unlikely 98 with the bat in his last Test, Larwood's tour was statistically the most dominant by a touring fast bowler since SF Barnes a quarter-century earlier.
Australia v England
1933-01-02
On 30 December 1932 at the MCG, Yorkshire's tall fast-medium bowler Bill Bowes, picked for England's Bodyline tour as Larwood's lieutenant, bowled Don Bradman first ball — a long hop that Bradman dragged on attempting to pull. Bowes finished with 1/50 in the innings; the first-ball duck is one of only seven in Bradman's Test career and has been retold in every history of the 1930s ever since.
England v India
1932-06-25
On 25 June 1932 Cottari Kanakaiya Nayudu led India onto Lord's for India's first Test match, the first non-white captain of an Empire side at headquarters. Mohammad Nissar's three early wickets reduced England to 19 for 3 and India lost by only 158 runs in a result that took English critics by surprise.
Australia v England
1932-12-02
On 2 December 1932 the Nawab of Pataudi Sr scored 102 on his Ashes debut at Sydney, the first Indian-born cricketer to make a hundred on Ashes debut. He played one more Test of the series and never another for England, his innings now a footnote inside the larger story of Bodyline.
Yorkshire v Nottinghamshire
1932-07-12
On 12 July 1932, slow left-armer Hedley Verity took 10 wickets for 10 runs at Headingley, dismissing a strong Nottinghamshire side for 67 in their second innings. The figures — 19.4 overs, 16 maidens, 10 for 10 — remain the best bowling analysis in the history of first-class cricket. Inside the spell were seven wickets in 15 deliveries, and a hat-trick. Yorkshire won by 10 wickets.
Australia v England
1932-12-03
In the first Test of the Bodyline series, with Bradman absent through illness and Australia 3 for 82, the 22-year-old Stan McCabe took on Larwood and Voce's leg-theory and counter-attacked his way to 187 not out off 233 balls. The innings included 25 fours and a string of hooks against the line of fire that briefly forced Jardine to drop the Bodyline field. Australia still lost the Test by ten wickets, but McCabe's century stands as one of the great acts of physical and moral courage in Test cricket.
England v India
1932-06-25
On 25 June 1932 India played its first Test, against England at Lord's, captained by Cottari Kanakaiya Nayudu after the Maharaja of Porbandar quietly stood aside on the morning of the match. India lost by 158 runs, but Mohammad Nissar took 5 for 93 with raw fast bowling, Amar Singh chipped in with 2/75 and 74 with the bat, and CK Nayudu stiffened the order. India had become the sixth Test-playing nation, after Australia, England, South Africa, West Indies and New Zealand.
New Zealand v England
1930-01-10
On 10 January 1930 New Zealand played their first Test match, against an MCC side at Lancaster Park, Christchurch. Tom Lowry captained the home team and Stewie Dempster batted nearly four hours for 136 in the second innings. England won by eight wickets but New Zealand's elevation to Test status was the inter-war period's quiet expansion of the international game.
England v Australia
1930-07-11
On 11 July 1930 a 21-year-old Don Bradman walked in at 1 for 1 and by stumps had scored an unbeaten 309 — still the only triple-century in a single day's Test play. He went on to 334 the next morning, then the highest individual score in Test cricket, surpassing Andy Sandham's 325. The match drew, but the innings catapulted Bradman from prodigy to phenomenon and underwrote his world-record series tally of 974 runs.
England v Australia
1930-06-27
Two weeks before his Headingley triple, Bradman walked out at Lord's and produced what he would call, decades later, the finest innings of his life: 254 from 376 balls, 25 fours, almost every stroke struck in the meat of the bat. Australia made 729 for 6 declared, levelled the series, and put English bowling on notice that the 1930 tour would be unlike anything previous.
England v Australia
1930-08-16
With the series locked at 1-1 and the Ashes on the line, Bradman walked out at The Oval and made 232 across two days. Australia won by an innings and 39 runs, regained the urn, and finished a series in which Bradman had averaged 139.14. It was the innings during which Douglas Jardine, watching from the pavilion, began thinking seriously about leg theory.
West Indies v England
1930-02-21
On 21 February 1930, in the second Test of MCC's tour of the Caribbean, West Indies beat England by 289 runs at Bourda in Georgetown — their first Test victory, three years after admission to Test status. George Headley, on debut at 20, scored 114 and 112; Clifford Roach made 209 in the first innings; Learie Constantine took 9 wickets in the match. West Indies cricket had its founding win.
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.
England v South Africa
1929-08-19
Nummy Deane's South Africans played five Tests in England in the long summer of 1929, losing the series 0-2 with three drawn but providing Hammond, Sutcliffe and Woolley with their first sustained run of home Test runs since 1926.
Australia v England
1929-03-08
Percy Chapman's England side, led by Hammond's record 905 runs and supported by the new-ball pair of Larwood and George Geary, won the 1928-29 Ashes 4-1 — the first English Ashes win in Australia for 17 years and the series in which a 20-year-old Don Bradman made his Test debut.
Sussex v Northamptonshire
1929-05-15
On 15 May 1929 the 24-year-old K.S. Duleepsinhji — Ranji's nephew and the second member of the family to play county cricket for Sussex — made 333 against Northamptonshire at Hove, then a Sussex record and the highest score made on the south coast in county cricket.
Yorkshire and England
1929-08-31
By 1929 Wilfred Rhodes was 51 years old and still bowling left-arm orthodox spin for Yorkshire — the senior statesman of English cricket who had bowled to W.G. Grace 30 years earlier and was now coaching the next generation. His final selection for England came in the 1929-30 West Indies tour, by which time he was 52.
England v West Indies
1928-06-23
On 23 June 1928 the West Indies played their first ever Test match, against England at Lord's. Bowled out for 177 and 166, they lost by an innings and 58 — but the team led by Karl Nunes and including the young Learie Constantine had crossed the threshold from regional cricket into Test cricket.
Australia v England
1928-11-30
On 30 November 1928 the 20-year-old Don Bradman made his Test debut against England at the Exhibition Ground in Brisbane. He scored 18 and 1 as Australia were beaten by 675 runs — the largest defeat in Test history at the time — and was dropped for the next Test before returning to begin a career that would average 99.94.
Nottinghamshire and English county cricket
1928-09-30
Across the 1927 and 1928 county seasons the 23-year-old Notts miner Harold Larwood took 100, 138 and then 138 wickets — establishing himself as the fastest bowler in England and securing his place in the 1928-29 Ashes side that would, four years later, take its leg-theory plans to Australia.
South Africa v England
1928-03-14
Ronnie Stanyforth's MCC tourists won the 1927-28 series in South Africa 2-1 with two drawn — the second consecutive English win in the country. Wally Hammond made his Test debut and a maiden Test hundred (51 in his first innings, then 90 and 66*) and the off-spin of George Geary took 19 wickets in five Tests at 20.
Gloucestershire and MCC
1927-05-31
By 31 May 1927 the 23-year-old Wally Hammond had scored 1,042 first-class runs for the season, the first batsman to make 1,000 by the end of May since W.G. Grace in 1895. The achievement announced the post-Hobbs generation and made Hammond a Test certainty for the rest of the decade.
England v Australia
1926-08-14
In June, July and August 1926 the 40-year-old Charlie Macartney made centuries in three successive Tests against England — 133 at Lord's, 151 at Headingley (where he reached 100 before lunch on the first morning), and 109 at Old Trafford. He was only the second man in Ashes history to score hundreds in three consecutive Tests.
England v Australia
1926-08-18
Recalled to the England side aged 48 years and 165 days, Wilfred Rhodes took 4 for 44 in Australia's second innings at the Oval in August 1926, helping to win England's first Ashes series since 1912. He remains the oldest man ever to play Test cricket.
England v Australia
1926-08-16
On the third morning of the fifth Test of 1926, after overnight thunderstorms had turned the Oval pitch into one of the most treacherous in Test history, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe added 172 for the first wicket — Hobbs 100, Sutcliffe 161 — in an innings widely regarded as the finest piece of opening batting in cricket.
Women's Cricket Association
1926-10-04
On 4 October 1926, at a women's cricket week at Colwall in the Malvern Hills, 70 players agreed to form the Women's Cricket Association — the first national governing body for women's cricket in any country. Within nine years the WCA had organised the first women's Test, between England and Australia at Brisbane in December 1934.
Australia v England
1925-01-01
On a rain-affected New Year's Day at the MCG in 1925, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe walked out to open and put on 283 — at the time the highest opening stand in Ashes Test history and an innings that announced one of the great opening partnerships of all cricket. England lost the match but the partnership had begun in earnest.
Australia v England
1925-03-04
Herbert Collins's Australians retained the Ashes 4-1 in the long, hot summer of 1924-25, but the central story of the series was the bowling of Maurice Tate — 38 wickets in five Tests, then a world record for any bowler in an Ashes series — and the formation, finally, of the Hobbs-Sutcliffe opening partnership.
Kent and England
1925-08-31
In 1925 the 38-year-old Frank Woolley scored 3,069 first-class runs and took 110 wickets — one of the great all-round seasons in English county cricket and the formal peak of a career that would finish with 58,969 runs and 2,068 wickets, both still among the top five in cricket history.
Pollard / Women's cricket in England
1925-08-15
Through the 1920s Marjorie Pollard was the leading all-rounder in English women's cricket and the founding journalist of the women's game. Her playing career, her organisation of the 1926 Colwall cricket week, and her editorship of Women's Cricket magazine from 1930 onward made her the central figure in the institutional history of women's cricket in England.
Australia v England
1925-03-04
On his debut Test series, the 30-year-old Yorkshire opener Herbert Sutcliffe scored 734 runs in five Tests at an average of 81.55 — at the time the highest Test debut series aggregate by any batsman in cricket history.
England v South Africa
1924-06-16
On a cloudy Edgbaston morning in June 1924, the new Sussex pair of Arthur Gilligan and Maurice Tate skittled South Africa for 30 — the lowest Test innings total ever made by a side that had won the toss. Tate took 4 for 12 and Gilligan 6 for 7, and the partnership with the new ball that would carry England through the mid-1920s was christened.
South Africa v England
1923-02-26
Frank Mann's MCC tourists arrived in South Africa in late 1922 to face Herbie Taylor's improving home side on matting wickets. Across five Tests they ground out a 2-1 series win — the first English Test victory in South Africa since 1913-14 — and confirmed the post-war restoration of England as a Test power away from Australia.
Sussex and England
1923-09-15
Through 1922 and 1923, on the advice of his Sussex captain Arthur Gilligan, the 28-year-old off-spinner Maurice Tate switched to fast-medium swing bowling. The change produced 219 wickets in 1923, his Test debut against South Africa at Edgbaston in 1924, and the bowling career that became the model for the English fast-medium swing tradition.
Warwickshire and England
1922-09-15
Ernest 'Tibby' or 'Tiger' Smith of Warwickshire kept wicket for England in 11 Tests between 1911 and 1914 and remained one of the most respected glove technicians in county cricket through the 1920s — keeping in 21 first-class seasons before becoming a coach to Don Bradman in his 1948 tour.
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.
England v Australia
1921-07-04
Captaining England in only his second Test, the Honourable Lionel Tennyson split his left hand fielding a Macartney drive, returned the next day to bat virtually one-handed, and made 63 and 36 against the Gregory-McDonald attack — an act of leadership remembered for a century as one of the bravest innings ever played by an England captain.
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.
England
1919-05-03
When the County Championship resumed in May 1919 after the four-year wartime break, the MCC introduced an experimental two-day match format with extended hours of play. Player exhaustion and a string of unsatisfactory finishes — many matches drawn, several rushed — led to the experiment being abandoned after a single season.
Surrey
1919-09-01
Jack Hobbs returned to first-class cricket in May 1919, aged 36 after a four-year war-imposed break, and immediately scored 2,594 runs at 60.32 in the experimental two-day season — confirming that the world's leading batsman had picked up exactly where he had left off in 1914.
England
1917-11-08
Colin Blythe, the slow left-arm spinner who had taken 100 Test wickets for England and been the heart of Kent's championship sides, was killed by a German shell while laying railway track behind the lines near Ypres on 8 November 1917. He was 38.
England
1916-07-01
Major William Booth — Major was his given name, not a rank — Yorkshire all-rounder and Test cricketer, was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, while serving with the 15th (Leeds Pals) West Yorkshire Regiment. He was 29.
England
1916-09-03
Kenneth Hutchings, the dashing Kent batsman who had toured Australia with England in 1907-08 and scored 126 at Melbourne, was killed by a shell at Ginchy on the Somme on 3 September 1916. He was 33.
England
1916-08-01
Although first-class cricket stopped in England between 1915 and 1918, schoolboy cricket — including the Eton-Harrow and Oxford-Cambridge fixtures, where age and conditions allowed — continued in modified form through the war, providing a thread of continuity through four otherwise empty seasons.
England, Australia services
1916-07-15
From 1915 onwards, charity and services cricket became the only first-rank cricket in England — featuring matches between Royal Navy, Army, RFC, Dominion troops and ad-hoc 'England' XIs raised from cricketers not in uniform. The proceeds went to war funds and the matches kept the game in the public eye.
England
1915-10-23
William Gilbert Grace, the Victorian giant who had effectively invented modern batsmanship and dominated English cricket for forty years, died at his home in Mottingham on 23 October 1915. He was 67. The Zeppelin raids over London in his final weeks were said by family to have agitated him beyond endurance.
England
1915-04-04
Andrew Ernest Stoddart, the only man to captain England at both cricket and rugby union and twice an Ashes-winning skipper in the 1890s, shot himself at his St John's Wood home on 4 April 1915. He was 52. His suicide was reported sympathetically in the press and quietly recorded by the inquest as the act of a man in poor health and worse spirits.
England
1915-04-15
In April 1915 the MCC formally announced that no County Championship would be held in 1915. With Test cricket already gone, the suspension marked the start of four consecutive lost first-class seasons in England — the longest gap in the history of the County Championship.
England
1915-08-15
Frank Foster, the Warwickshire left-armer who had taken 32 wickets on the 1911-12 Ashes tour as Sydney Barnes' new-ball partner, was injured in a motorcycle accident on military duty in August 1915. He never played first-class cricket again. He was 26.
England
1914-08-27
On 27 August 1914, four weeks into the war, W.G. Grace published an open letter in The Sportsman urging that first-class cricket be suspended. The letter — 'I think the time has arrived when the county cricket season should be closed' — effectively ended the 1914 season early and shamed any club still playing into stopping.
Surrey
1914-08-26
Jack Hobbs scored 2,697 first-class runs at 58.63 in the truncated 1914 season, including 11 centuries. He was 31, at the absolute peak of his powers, and would not play another full first-class season until 1919, by which time he was 36.
England
1914-07-01
Frank Woolley emerged in the years 1910-1914 as the most beautiful left-handed batsman in cricket — Kent's all-round star, England's middle-order hope and, after the war, one of only nine men to score over 50,000 first-class runs.
Middlesex
1914-08-01
Patsy Hendren made his Middlesex debut in 1907 and through the 1910s grew into one of the most popular cricketers ever to play at Lord's — short, jovial, brilliantly quick in the deep, and a batsman who would eventually score 170 first-class centuries.
Surrey
1914-08-25
Tom Hayward, the Surrey opener who had partnered Jack Hobbs for nearly a decade and been one of the leading English professionals of the Edwardian age, played his final first-class season in 1914. The interruption of the war meant he never had a proper farewell match.
England women's clubs
1914-07-01
The White Heather Club, founded in 1887 in Yorkshire, continued through the 1910s as the most prominent organised women's cricket club in England, playing exhibition matches and serving as the bridge between Victorian and modern women's cricket.
Australia and England
1914-07-30
Albert Trott, the only batsman ever to hit a ball over the Lord's pavilion and a Test cricketer for both Australia and England, shot himself at his Willesden Green lodgings on 30 July 1914 — five days before Britain entered the war. He was 41, ill, in debt, and had left a hand-written will on the back of a laundry bill bequeathing his wardrobe to his landlady.
South Africa vs England
1914-02-27
Sydney Barnes took 49 wickets in four Tests on the 1913-14 tour of South Africa — the most by any bowler in any series in Test history. He missed the fifth Test in a pay dispute. The figure has stood for more than a century and remains the great unbroken individual bowling record of Test cricket.
South Africa vs England
1913-12-26
Sydney Barnes took 8 for 56 and 9 for 103 — match figures of 17 for 159 — at the Old Wanderers in Johannesburg in the second Test of the 1913-14 series. The figures were the best in any Test match for the next 42 years, only surpassed by Jim Laker's 19 for 90 at Old Trafford in 1956.
Yorkshire
1913-09-01
Schofield Haigh, the Yorkshire and England fast-medium bowler who had taken over 2,000 first-class wickets and had been the unsung partner of Hirst and Rhodes for two decades, retired from first-class cricket at the end of 1913 with worsening health. He died in 1921, his Yorkshire colleagues said, partly of grief at the war losses.
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.
England, Australia, South Africa
1912-08-22
The first attempt at a three-nation Test tournament — England, Australia and South Africa playing a round-robin in England in 1912 — was destroyed by the wettest summer on record, a depleted Australian side stripped of its Big Six, an outclassed South Africa, and crowds that simply didn't turn up. No comparable multilateral Test event was attempted for decades.
England, Australia, South Africa
1912-08-31
The 1912 Triangular Tournament was played in the wettest English summer since records began in 1766. August 1912 was the coldest, dullest and wettest August of the entire 20th century. With pitches uncovered and Tests three days long, much of the tournament was a sodden farce.
South Africa
1912-08-15
South Africa in the 1912 Triangular Tournament were a catastrophe. Captained by the English-born Frank Mitchell, they lost all three of their Tests against England — by an innings, by 174 runs and by 10 wickets — and one of two against Australia. The performances confirmed that the googly era was over.
England
1912-08-22
Charles Burgess Fry, the polymath athlete who had played football for England and held the world long-jump record, captained England through the 1912 Triangular Tournament — winning all six Tests, taking England to the title and ending his Test career undefeated as captain.
South Africa and England
1912-06-10
Frank Mitchell, born in Yorkshire and a former England rugby international, was selected to captain South Africa in the 1912 Triangular — one of the most extreme cases of cross-national selection in cricket history. South Africa lost all five of their Tests under his leadership.
Australia vs England
1912-03-01
England's seam pair Sydney Barnes and Frank Foster shared 66 of the 95 Australian wickets to fall as Plum Warner's MCC side, captained by Johnny Douglas after Warner fell ill, lost the opening Test in Sydney and then won four in a row to take the series 4-1.
England, Australia, South Africa
1910-06-15
The Imperial Cricket Conference, founded at Lord's in June 1909 with England, Australia and South Africa as founding members, became operationally active through 1910-1914 — the body that scheduled the 1912 Triangular and would in time become the modern ICC.
England
1910-12-15
Wilfred Rhodes had begun his Test career in 1899 batting at number eleven for England; through 1910-12 he was promoted up the order until, on the 1911-12 tour of Australia, he was opening with Jack Hobbs. The transformation produced one of cricket's great opening pairs and culminated in the 323-run stand at Melbourne.
England, Australia, South Africa
1909-06-15
On 15 June 1909, representatives of the MCC, the Australian Cricket Board and the South African Cricket Association met at Lord's and founded the Imperial Cricket Conference, the body that became the International Cricket Council. The proposal had been pushed for two years by South African mining magnate Abe Bailey; it created the first international cricket governing structure.
England, Australia
1909-08-11
Monty Noble's Australians won the 1909 Ashes 2-1 in England, the first Australian series win in England since 1902. Warren Bardsley scored 136 and 130 in the drawn fifth Test at The Oval (9-11 August 1909), becoming the first cricketer ever to make a century in each innings of a Test match. Australia's pace bowler Tibby Cotter and all-rounder Warwick Armstrong led the tour averages.
England, Australia
1908-02-27
Australia, captained by Monty Noble, regained the Ashes from Plum Warner's England side 4-1 in the 1907-08 series. Charlie Macartney made his Test debut as a left-arm spinner (and earned the nickname 'Governor General'); Trumper and Noble batted superbly; the series featured two thrilling close finishes at Sydney and Melbourne.
Yorkshire, England
1908-08-31
Schofield Haigh, the Yorkshire medium-pacer with a sharp off-break, took 158 wickets at 12.51 in the 1902 county season — a strike rate matched in modern English cricket only by Colin Blythe (1912) and Harold Larwood (1931). Often the third bowler behind Hirst and Rhodes in published accounts, Haigh played 11 Tests for England and was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1901.
South Africa, England
1907-07-01
South Africa's first major tour of England, in 1907, featured four wrist-spin bowlers — Reggie Schwarz, Bert Vogler, Aubrey Faulkner and Gordon White — all bowling the googly that Schwarz had learned from Bernard Bosanquet. Faulkner's 6 for 17 in 11 overs at Headingley reduced England to 76, and the tour established the googly as a global Test weapon.
Australia, England
1907-12-13
Charlie Macartney, picked as a left-arm spinner with handy lower-order batting, made his Test debut at Sydney in December 1907. Kent's KL Hutchings, observing Macartney's confident demeanour at the wicket, dubbed him 'The Governor-General' — a name meant ironically (Macartney was barely 21) but one that stuck for the rest of his career.
Sussex, England
1907-03-07
Through the early 1900s K.S. Ranjitsinhji captained Sussex (1899-1903), played 15 Tests for England, and continued to redefine batting through the leg glance. In March 1907 he succeeded as Jam Sahib of Nawanagar and effectively withdrew from full-time first-class cricket. He returned briefly in 1908 and 1912 but his Sussex career was over by the time he became a ruler.
England, South Africa
1907-07-30
On a rain-affected pitch at Headingley, the Kent left-arm spinner Colin Blythe took 8 for 59 and 7 for 40 — match figures of 15 for 99 — to bowl England to a 53-run win over South Africa in the second Test of 1907. It was Blythe's only Test five-wicket haul in a Test won by England, and the high point of his Test career.
South Africa, England
1907-07-15
South Africa's 1907 tour of England was their fourth visit but the first to include Test matches. England won the three-Test series 1-0 (with two draws), but the South African googly quartet — Reggie Schwarz, Bert Vogler, Aubrey Faulkner and Gordon White — astonished English cricket. Across the whole tour South Africa won 21 of 31 matches.
Lancashire, England
1907-08-30
John Thomas Tyldesley — known throughout Lancashire as 'J.T.' to distinguish him from his younger brother Ernest — was the leading professional batter of Edwardian England. Between 1900 and 1909 he scored over 19,000 first-class runs at an average above 40 and represented England in 31 Tests. He combined a back-foot strength against fast bowling with a hooking technique that contemporaries — including Trumper — singled out for praise.
Yorkshire, England
1906-08-30
In 1906 Yorkshire's George Hirst scored 2,385 first-class runs at 45.86 and took 208 wickets at 16.50 — a 'double-double' (2,000 runs and 200 wickets) that no cricketer before or since has achieved in a single season. Wisden called it 'a feat unique in the history of the game' and it remains so 120 years on.
Surrey, England
1906-09-01
Tom Hayward of Surrey was the second man (after W.G. Grace in 1895) to score 1,000 runs before the end of May, achieving the feat in 1900. In 1906 he set a new English first-class record aggregate of 3,518 runs in a season — a figure not surpassed until Compton and Edrich in 1947.
South Africa, England
1906-01-04
On 4 January 1906 at the Old Wanderers, Johannesburg, South Africa beat England by one wicket in the first Test of a five-match series — their first Test victory at the 12th attempt. Dave Nourse's 93 not out and Gordon White's 81 carried the home side past 284 in the fourth innings; the South African googly quartet, all on debut in the same match, took 11 wickets between them.
England, Australia
1905-08-21
Captaining England for the first time in 1905, Stanley Jackson won all five tosses against Joe Darling, topped both batting and bowling averages on either side (492 runs at 70.28; 13 wickets at 15.46), and led England to a 2-0 series win to retain the Ashes. He retired from Test cricket immediately afterwards, never having toured Australia.
Australia, England
1905-07-15
Albert 'Tibby' Cotter, a stocky 21-year-old fast bowler from Sydney, made his Test debut against England in 1903-04 but became famous on the 1905 Ashes tour. He bowled bouncers as a tactic when most Edwardian fast bowlers thought them ungentlemanly, set packed slip-cordons, and broke stumps. He died in October 1917 in a mounted charge at Beersheba — the only Australian Test cricketer killed in the Great War.
Australia, England
1905-08-31
Warwick Armstrong, Australia's 26-year-old all-rounder, scored 2,002 runs and took 130 wickets in first-class matches on the 1905 tour of England — one of the great all-rounder tour returns of all time. The 'Big Ship' was Joe Darling's most consistent player; he would go on to play 50 Tests and captain Australia to a 5-0 Ashes whitewash in 1920-21.
England, Australia
1905-07-24
Reginald Herbert Spooner made his Test debut for England v Australia at Old Trafford on 24 July 1905, having been one of the most-talked-about batsmen of the unbeaten Lancashire side of 1903-04. A stylist in the Trumper mould, he played 10 Tests, made 247 v Notts in 1903 (a Lancashire record), and shared a 368-run opening stand with Archie MacLaren the same year.
England, Australia
1904-03-05
Pelham 'Plum' Warner captained the first MCC-organised tour to Australia in 1903-04, regaining the Ashes 3-2 — England's first Ashes series win since 1896. Warner's selection was controversial (Archie MacLaren refused to tour because of it), but the campaign produced R.E. Foster's 287, Bosanquet's googly debut and Warner's own bestselling book 'How We Recovered The Ashes'.
Australia, England
1904-03-07
Hugh Trumble took 7 for 28 in his last Test innings, including a hat-trick of Bosanquet, Plum Warner and Dick Lilley, as Australia beat England by 218 runs at the MCG in March 1904. The hat-trick was Trumble's second in Tests (the first being against England at the same ground in 1902); he was the first man to take two Test hat-tricks. Australia won the dead rubber but lost the series 3-2.
England, Australia
1903-12-11
Reginald Erskine 'Tip' Foster scored 287 on Test debut at Sydney in December 1903, then the highest individual score in Test cricket. It remained a world record until 1930 and is still the highest score by any Test debutant. Foster's epic dragged England, captained by Plum Warner, from 73 for 3 to a first innings of 577 and the platform for an Ashes-winning campaign.
England, Australia
1903-12-11
On England's 1903-04 tour of Australia, Bernard Bosanquet bowled what he himself called the first googly delivered in Australia, dismissing Victor Trumper. The new delivery — a leg-break action producing an off-break — would within a decade reshape spin bowling worldwide. Bosanquet's 6 for 51 in the fourth Test at Sydney sealed the Ashes for Plum Warner's England.
Australia, England
1903-12-17
Chasing 577 in the fourth innings after R.E. Foster's 287 had taken England to a giant total, Australia were 173 for 5 with the Test seemingly lost when Victor Trumper, on 0, was joined by Clem Hill. Trumper went on to 185 not out — his hundred coming in 94 minutes — but it was not enough: Australia, all out 485, lost the match by five wickets. The innings is often ranked alongside Trumper's Old Trafford 104.
MCC, Middlesex, England
1903-12-11
Pelham 'Plum' Warner, the Trinidad-born Oxford-educated Middlesex amateur, captained the first MCC team to tour Australia under the club's name in 1903-04 and won that series 3-2. The tour established the convention that English overseas tours were thereafter MCC enterprises rather than private commercial ventures, an institutional change in international cricket whose effects lasted until 1977.
England, Australia
1902-07-26
The fourth Ashes Test of 1902 at Old Trafford was won by Australia by just three runs, the narrowest margin in Ashes history until 2005. Sussex bowler Fred Tate, drafted in for his only Test, dropped a key catch off Joe Darling at square leg and was last man out, bowled by Saunders for four. The match defined his life: he was forever known for 'Fred Tate's Test'.
England, Australia
1902-08-13
Set 263 to win and tottering at 48 for 5, England were rescued by Gilbert Jessop, whose 104 in 75 minutes — with his 50 in 43 minutes — remains one of the fastest and most consequential innings in Test history. George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes saw England home by one wicket, immortalising the (probably apocryphal) 'we'll get them in singles' exchange.
Australia, England
1902-07-24
On the rain-affected opening morning of the fourth Ashes Test of 1902, Victor Trumper drove, cut and pulled the England attack to ribbons, reaching 103 not out by lunch — the first century before lunch on day one of a Test match. Wisden, MacLaren and a generation of cricket writers would describe it as among the finest innings ever played.
England, Australia
1902-08-13
When Bill Lockwood was bowled at 248 for 9 in England's chase of 263 at The Oval on 13 August 1902, Wilfred Rhodes joined his Yorkshire team-mate George Hirst with 15 runs still required against Trumble, Saunders and Noble. The two professionals from Kirkheaton edged, deflected and sometimes simply blocked their way to a one-wicket win — the foundation of perhaps cricket's most famous (and most disputed) quotation, 'we'll get them in singles'.
Australia, England
1902-09-01
Jack Saunders, the left-arm spin bowler from Victoria, took 123 first-class wickets at 16.95 on the 1902 tour of England — bowling alongside Hugh Trumble in the side that won the Ashes 2-1. Saunders bowled the last ball of Fred Tate's Test at Old Trafford and was Australia's leading wicket-taker on the tour after Trumble.
England, Australia
1902-05-29
On 29 May 1902 at Edgbaston, on a damp pitch, Wilfred Rhodes (7 for 17) and George Hirst (3 for 15) bowled Australia out for 36 — for almost a century the lowest total in Test cricket. The remarkable bowling, taking 90 minutes, is part of the Edgbaston Test legend; the match was eventually drawn after a thunderstorm washed out two days.
England, Australia
1902-05-29
Before Wilfred Rhodes and George Hirst rolled Australia for 36 at Edgbaston on 29 May 1902, the day's foundation had been laid by Johnny Tyldesley's 138 in four and a half hours — an innings that took England to 376 for 9 declared. Tyldesley, the Lancashire professional, was at the height of his powers; the innings is sometimes overlooked because of what followed in the afternoon.
Sussex, Rest of England
1901-09-15
Between 14 August and 11 September 1901 the Sussex amateur Charles Burgess Fry scored six first-class hundreds in successive innings: 106 v Hampshire, 209 v Yorkshire, 149 v Middlesex, 105 v Surrey, 140 v Kent and 105 for Rest of England v Yorkshire. The sequence remains the joint record (later equalled by Don Bradman in 1938-39) for consecutive first-class hundreds.
England, Australia
1901-12-13
Sydney Barnes, then a Lancashire League professional with seven first-class matches to his name, made his Test debut at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 13 December 1901, taking 5 for 65. He went on to take 19 wickets in his first two Tests before injury ended his tour. Barnes' career was unique: 27 Tests, 189 wickets at 16.43, but only 47 first-class County Championship matches, his preference being the better-paid Minor Counties and Lancashire League.
England, Australia
1899-06-01
Wilfred Rhodes made his Test debut at Trent Bridge in June 1899 — the same match that proved to be W.G. Grace's last Test. Rhodes' Test career would span 30 years 313 days, the longest in history; he would also be the oldest Test player ever (52 years 165 days). Through the 1900s he was first England's slow left-arm spinner and then, by 1909, an opening batsman.
England v Australia
1899-06-29
On 29 June 1899, in the first Test ever played at Headingley, Middlesex's medium-pacer Jack Hearne took the wickets of Clem Hill, Syd Gregory and Monty Noble in three consecutive balls — England's first hat-trick against Australia in Test cricket. Australia were dismissed for 172. The match was drawn after Johnny Briggs collapsed in an epileptic fit overnight (see entry); the hat-trick lit one of the bleakest days in English cricket.
England v Australia
1899-06-30
On the night of 29-30 June 1899, after the first day of England's first Test at Headingley, Lancashire's left-arm spinner Johnny Briggs — already a 33-Test veteran with 118 wickets — suffered a violent epileptic fit at the team hotel. He was admitted to Cheadle Royal Hospital. He played one more season of county cricket in 1900 before relapses forced him to a sanatorium. He died in 1902 aged 39 — the first Test cricketer known to have died of an epilepsy-related illness.
Australia v England
1897-12-13
Ranjitsinhji arrived in Sydney for the First Test of the 1897-98 Ashes with quinsy, lost 12 pounds in three days, and was excused from the field for the start of the match by rain. When he batted, weakened and at number seven, he made 175 in 223 minutes — then the highest Test score by an England batsman in Australia. England won the Test by nine wickets. Australia would win the rubber 4-1, but Ranji's Sydney innings is often cited as his greatest.
England (Stoddart's XI)
1897-12-13
The 1897-98 Ashes tour of Australia, captained by Andrew Stoddart for the second time, became the most personally bleak overseas English tour of the century. News of his mother's death reached him before the First Test; he stood down from the first two Tests and let Archie MacLaren lead. Stoddart returned for the Third and Fourth Tests, made 17, 24, 9 and 25, was barracked at Sydney, and walked off the cricket field for the last time. The tour was the high tide of his unravelling — he died by suicide in 1915.
England v Australia
1896-07-18
On 18 July 1896 K.S. Ranjitsinhji, 23, a Cambridge graduate from Nawanagar, walked out at Old Trafford for his Test debut and made 62 in the first innings and an unbeaten 154 in the second — including 113 between the start of the third morning and lunch, becoming the first batsman to score a century before lunch in Test cricket. The MCC selectors had refused him for the First Test on grounds that were widely understood to be racial; Lancashire's local committee picked him for Manchester. Australia won the Test, but the leg-glanced 154* changed cricket's conversation about who could play it.
South Africa v England
1896-03-02
On 2 March 1896 at the Old Wanderers in Johannesburg, Surrey's George Lohmann took 9 for 28 in 14.2 four-ball overs as South Africa were bowled out for 197 in their first innings. It was the first nine-wicket innings haul in Test cricket and stood as the best Test bowling figures in the world for sixty years until Jim Laker's 10 for 53 at Old Trafford in 1956. Lohmann would finish the series with 35 wickets at 5.80, still the highest tally in any three-Test series.
South Africa v England
1896-02-13
Three weeks before the 9/28 at Old Wanderers, George Lohmann took 7 for 38 and 8 for 7 — match figures of 15 for 45 — at Port Elizabeth, dismissing South Africa for 30 in the second innings and ending the match with a hat-trick. The 30 all out remained the lowest Test innings total for sixty years; the 15/45 was then the best match analysis in Test cricket. The First Test of the 1895-96 series ran two days.
England v Australia
1896-07-16
In the same Old Trafford Test that produced Ranjitsinhji's debut 154*, England's fast bowler Tom Richardson took 7 for 168 and 6 for 76 — match figures of 13 for 244 from 110 overs of fast bowling. He bowled unchanged for three hours on the final afternoon as Australia scrabbled to 125 for 7 chasing 125 to win. Australia held on by three wickets. Richardson's spell is one of the great lost-cause performances in Test history.
Australia v England
1894-12-20
On 20 December 1894, with Australia 113 for 2 chasing 177 and the match seemingly won, overnight rain and a hot Sydney sun turned the SCG into a sticky. Bobby Peel — pulled from a hangover by his captain Andrew Stoddart — took 6 for 67 and England won by 10 runs. It was the first time in Test history a side had won after following on, after Australia's first-innings 586 had piled up against an England 325. Wisden called it 'probably the most sensational match ever played either in Australia or in England.'
Australia v England
1894-12-29
Days after the Sydney follow-on miracle, England captain Andrew Stoddart played the innings he later called 'the century of my career' — 173 from 297 minutes at the MCG, taking England 2-0 up in the 1894-95 Ashes. The score remained the highest by an England captain in Australia until Mike Denness passed it 80 years later in 1974-75. Stoddart's tour was the high tide of his cricketing life.
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.
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 / 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.
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.
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.
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
1882-08-29
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 / 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.
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.
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.
Australia v England
1879-01-02
On 2 January 1879, in only the third Test ever played, Fred Spofforth took the first hat-trick in Test cricket — Vernon Royle bowled, Francis MacKinnon bowled, Tom Emmett lbw — at the MCG. He finished the innings with 6 for 48 and the match with 13 wickets for 110 runs, an Australian win by 10 wickets, and an early sketch of the Demon Bowler legend that would mature at The Oval three years later.
England in Australia
1878-12-01
Lord Harris's 1878-79 tour of Australia was the first England touring side led by an amateur captain to play what would later be recognised as a Test match. The trip produced the third Test in history — the Spofforth hat-trick match at Melbourne — and the Sydney Riot at the Association Ground in February 1879.
Australia in England
1878-05-01
From May to September 1878 the first representative Australian XI toured Great Britain and North America. Captained by Dave Gregory and managed by John Conway, the side played 37 matches in four months, beat MCC at Lord's in a single day, and turned a profit of £750 each for the players. None of the matches were Tests — but the tour established that cricket between the two countries was financially and competitively viable.
Australia vs England
1877-03-15
Cricket's first Test match was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground from 15 to 19 March 1877. A combined Australian XI captained by Dave Gregory beat James Lillywhite's touring English professionals by 45 runs. Charles Bannerman scored 165 retired hurt — the first Test century — and Tom Kendall took 7 for 55 in the second innings to clinch the win. The match was not officially designated a Test until decades later, but it has stood ever since as the start point of international Test cricket.
Australia vs England
1877-03-15
Alfred Shaw of Nottinghamshire, the most accurate slow-medium bowler in England, delivered the first ball in Test cricket — to Charles Bannerman at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on the morning of 15 March 1877. Bannerman took a single off the fourth ball of the over to register the first Test run.
Australia vs England
1877-03-15
James Lillywhite junior of Sussex, captain and promoter of the touring English professionals, became the first England Test captain when his side took the field at Melbourne on 15 March 1877. England lost the match by 45 runs but won the rematch a fortnight later, levelling the unofficial series.
England in New Zealand
1877-02-13
Ted Pooley, the Surrey wicketkeeper and acknowledged best gloveman in England, missed the first Test in March 1877 because he was sitting in a Christchurch jail. He had been arrested after a betting dispute at the Carlton Hotel turned into an assault charge. By the time he was acquitted, the tour had sailed for Sydney and the first Test had been lost.
Australia vs England
1877-03-31
A fortnight after losing the first Test, Lillywhite's England side won the rematch on the same Melbourne pitch by 4 wickets. Alfred Shaw took 5/40 and 4/41, George Ulyett scored 52 in the second innings, and the unofficial 1877 series was tied 1-1.
Australia vs England
1877-03-16
Billy Midwinter, the Gloucestershire-born Australian all-rounder, took 5 for 78 in England's first innings of the inaugural Test at Melbourne — the first five-wicket haul in Test cricket. He went on to become the only man to play Test cricket for both England and Australia.
England vs Surrey
1866-07-31
Two weeks after his eighteenth birthday, W.G. Grace scored 224 not out for England against Surrey at the Oval — his maiden first-class century, his first double-hundred, and the innings that, in Harry Altham's phrase, made him 'thenceforward the biggest name in cricket'. On the second afternoon his captain V.E. Walker let him slip away to Crystal Palace to win the National Olympian Association 440 yards hurdles race; he then returned to bat on.
Various women's teams, England
1853-08-01
Women's cricket in the 1850s existed as a scattered tradition of charity and novelty matches, usually organised for local fundraising, in which village women played against each other in informal matches that drew curious crowds. While far removed from the professional game, these fixtures kept the women's cricket tradition alive between the formal matches of the 1790s and the organised women's cricket clubs of the 1880s.
Sussex vs England
1827-07-25
To resolve the running argument over roundarm bowling, the MCC sanctioned three matches in the summer of 1827 between Sussex — whose bowlers Lillywhite and Broadbridge would deliver roundarm — and an England XI bowling only underarm. Played at Sheffield (4-6 June), Lord's (18-19 June) and Brighton (23-25 July), the series was meant to test whether roundarm should be legalised. Sussex won the first two and lost the third, the trial was declared inconclusive, and the law was nudged a step further the following year.
Surrey vs England
1801-06-15
John Hammond of Storrington, a 22-year-old Sussex professional, kept wicket for England against Surrey at Lord's in June 1801 — his first major appearance behind the stumps. He took two stumpings and a catch and was praised by contemporaries for his quiet hands. He would keep wicket in major matches for twenty years and is remembered as the leading Regency wicketkeeper.