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.
Gujarat Titans
5 May 2026
Kagiso Rabada led the IPL 2026 wicket-takers' chart through the league phase with 16 wickets and a tournament-leading impact score of 492.33 — the bowling spine of GT's playoff-bound campaign and the most consistent fast-bowling performance of the season.
South Africa vs West Indies
28 October 2021
Quinton de Kock withdrew from South Africa's T20 World Cup match against the West Indies after Cricket South Africa mandated players take a knee before matches.
South Africa vs Australia
19 November 2016
South African captain Faf du Plessis was found guilty of ball tampering for applying mint-laden saliva to the ball during the Hobart Test against Australia.
India vs South Africa
25 November 2015
The Nagpur Test pitch for the 2015 India-South Africa series was rated 'poor' by the ICC after the match ended in under three days on a pitch that crumbled and turned square from day one.
South Africa vs Australia
19 February 2014
South African fast bowler Vernon Philander was found guilty of ball tampering during the second Test against Australia at Port Elizabeth and fined 75% of his match fee.
South Africa vs Pakistan
15 October 2013
Faf du Plessis was caught on camera rubbing the ball against the zipper of his trouser pocket during a Test against Pakistan, constituting ball tampering.
South Africa
13 June 2012
South African fast bowler Wayne Parnell admitted to meeting a bookmaker during the IPL but claimed he did not engage in any corrupt activity.
South Africa / IPL franchise
1 May 2012
South African batsman JP Duminy reported that he was approached by a suspected bookmaker during IPL 2012, and was praised for following proper reporting procedures.
England vs South Africa
26 July 2004
South Africa were accused of ball tampering during the third Test against England at The Oval in 2004, with the ball being replaced by umpires.
India vs South Africa
20 November 2001
Match referee Mike Denness charged Sachin Tendulkar with ball tampering and imposed bans on six Indian players after the Port Elizabeth Test, leading India to demand Denness' removal and nearly causing a diplomatic crisis.
India vs South Africa
16 November 2001
Sachin Tendulkar was charged with ball tampering by match referee Mike Denness during a Test in South Africa, causing a diplomatic crisis between India and the ICC.
South Africa vs India
2000-04-07
On April 7, 2000, the Delhi police Crime Branch announced they had recordings of South African captain Hansie Cronje discussing match-fixing arrangements with London-based Indian bookmaker Sanjeev Chawla. The wiretap had been placed for an extortion case unrelated to cricket. A police officer's son recognised Cronje's voice on a tape brought home — and the biggest scandal in cricket history began.
South Africa vs India
19 March 2000
Hansie Cronje offered Herschelle Gibbs $15,000 to score fewer than 20 runs in an ODI against India. Gibbs agreed but then scored 74, failing to carry out the fix.
South Africa vs India
9 March 2000
Delhi Police intercepted phone calls revealing Hansie Cronje had been in contact with bookmaker Sanjay Chawla during the 2000 India tour of South Africa, sparking the global match-fixing crisis.
South Africa
1999-06-17
At the 1999 World Cup, Lance Klusener became one of cricket's great individual stories — 281 runs at an average of 140.50 and a strike rate of 122, plus 17 wickets at 20.58. He won four Player of the Match awards in nine matches. Yet South Africa exited at the semi-final stage in the famous Edgbaston tied semi.
South Africa vs West Indies
1998-11-01
On November 1, 1998 in Dhaka, South Africa beat West Indies by four wickets in the inaugural ICC KnockOut Trophy final — the tournament that would become the Champions Trophy. It was also the first ICC senior tournament hosted by Bangladesh, a strategic gift to the Test-aspirant nation.
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.
Pakistan vs South Africa
1994-10-13
In October 1994, at age 25, Hansie Cronje took over as full-time South African Test captain after Kepler Wessels stepped down. He was the youngest South African captain in 96 years. Over the next six years he would lead South Africa to 27 Test wins, 99 ODI victories — and eventually the match-fixing scandal that destroyed his career.
South Africa vs Pakistan
1992-03-08
On March 8, 1992, Jonty Rhodes — gathering the ball at backward point — sprinted four metres and dived horizontally into the stumps with the ball still in his hand to run out Inzamam-ul-Haq for 48. The image redefined cricket fielding for a generation.
South Africa vs India
1992-11-14
On November 14, 1992 at Kingsmead, Sachin Tendulkar became the first batter in cricket history to be given out by a third umpire. Cyril Mitchley referred a tight run-out call upstairs to Karl Liebenberg, who confirmed Tendulkar was out for 11. The technology era of decision-making had begun.
West Indies vs South Africa
1992-04-18
On April 18-23, 1992, South Africa played their first Test match in 22 years — against the West Indies in Bridgetown. They lost by 52 runs after collapsing from 122/2 to 148 all out chasing 201. Curtly Ambrose took 6/34 in the second innings; Barbadian fans largely boycotted the game in protest at Anderson Cummins' omission.
England vs South Africa
22 March 1992
A farcical rain rule calculation left South Africa needing 22 runs off 1 ball in the World Cup semi-final, robbing them of a realistic chance of reaching the final.
India vs South Africa
1991-11-10
On November 10, 1991, South Africa returned to international cricket after 22 years of apartheid-era isolation, playing India in front of more than 90,000 spectators at Eden Gardens, Calcutta. The Proteas lost by three wickets — but cricket's lost nation was back.
West Indies, South Africa
1983-01-19
Captained by Jamaican batsman Lawrence Rowe, two unauthorised West Indies XI tours of apartheid South Africa in 1982-83 and 1983-84 led to lifetime bans by the WICB and the social ostracism of all 18 squad members across the Caribbean.
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.
South Africa vs England/Sri Lanka/West Indies/Australia rebel XIs
6 March 1982
Multiple international teams sent unofficial rebel squads to play in apartheid-era South Africa, leading to lengthy bans for participating players and deepening cricket's political fault lines.
South Africa vs Various (Cancelled Tours)
1 January 1971
India was among the first nations to sever cricketing ties with South Africa over apartheid, and the broader international boycott eventually led to South Africa's complete isolation from world cricket for 21 years.
South Africa and the international cricket community
1969-09-01
By 1969, in the wake of the D'Oliveira Affair of 1968, South Africa's cricketing isolation was accelerating. The ICC had cancelled the England tour of South Africa in 1968-69; pressure was building from newly independent African nations in the ICC; and the 1970 Rest of the World tour — arranged as a replacement for South Africa's cancelled England tour — was itself boycotted by several nations. South Africa would play their last Test in March 1970.
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.
South Africa vs Various
1965-07-06
Graeme Pollock of Eastern Province was one of the two or three best batsmen in the world in the 1960s — a left-hander of such natural genius that Don Bradman rated him alongside Sobers as the finest post-war player he had seen. In 23 Tests he scored 2,256 runs at 60.97. South Africa's isolation ended his career at 26, depriving him of at least a decade of Test cricket.
Australia vs South Africa
1963-12-06
On 6 December 1963 at the Gabba, in his first over of the first Test against South Africa, Australian left-arm fast bowler Ian Meckiff was no-balled four times by umpire Col Egar — for throwing. Captain Richie Benaud removed him after the over and never bowled him again. Meckiff retired from all cricket at the end of the match. He was 28.
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.
South Africa vs New Zealand
1953-12-26
On Boxing Day 1953 at Ellis Park, Bert Sutcliffe — knocked unconscious before lunch by a Neil Adcock bouncer — returned to the crease with his head wrapped in bandages and made 80 not out. As the ninth wicket fell, fast bowler Bob Blair, who had earlier learned that his fiancée had died in the Tangiwai rail disaster on Christmas Eve, walked out of the tunnel to a stunned silence and added 33 in 10 minutes. New Zealand reached 187. The story remains the most emotional in their cricket history.
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.
England v South Africa
1947-06-23
On 23 June 1947 at Lord's, Denis Compton (208) and Bill Edrich (189) added 370 for the third wicket against South Africa, in a Test that crowned the most adored summer English cricket has known. Their partnership remains the highest for any wicket in a Lord's Test, and the highest for England's third wicket in any Test. Of 47 boundaries shared, 46 were fours; their batting in the warm post-war sunshine was, in Wisden's phrase, 'the talk of London'.
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.
Australia
1936-03-06
Clarrie Grimmett was the first bowler in Test history to take 200 Test wickets — reaching the milestone in March 1936 against South Africa, in his last Test innings before being controversially dropped. He finished with 216 wickets in 37 Tests at 24.21, all of them taken between the ages of 33 and 44, and held the world Test wicket record until Alec Bedser broke it in 1953.
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.
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.
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.
Aubrey Faulkner / Faulkner School of Cricket
1924-04-15
In April 1924 the South African all-rounder Aubrey Faulkner opened the Faulkner School of Cricket in Walham Green, London — the first dedicated indoor coaching school in cricket, and the institutional model for every coaching academy that followed across the 20th century.
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.
South Africa
1918-11-18
Reginald Schwarz, the South African leg-spinner who in the 1900s helped pioneer the googly attack with Faulkner, Vogler and White, died of influenza at Étaples in northern France on 18 November 1918 — exactly one week after the Armistice. He was 43.
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.
South Africa
1914-03-01
South Africa's celebrated googly attack of Reggie Schwarz, Bert Vogler, Aubrey Faulkner and Gordon White peaked in the 1905-06 home series and on the 1907 tour of England. By 1910-14 — the period covered by the Triangular Tournament and the 1913-14 Barnes series — the foursome had broken up and South Africa had no comparable bowling resource.
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.
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.
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.
South Africa, Australia
1910-12-15
George Aubrey Faulkner of Transvaal was — by Wisden's 1910 reckoning — 'the best all-rounder in the world'. He averaged 60.55 in the 1909-10 series at home v England, then made 732 runs at 73.20 (including 204) on the 1910-11 tour of Australia, where South Africa lost the series 4-1. A googly bowler and middle-order batsman, his career spanned 1906 to 1924.
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, 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.
South Africa, England, Australia
1909-12-01
After their breakthrough 1907 tour of England, South Africa's googly quartet — Reggie Schwarz, Bert Vogler, Aubrey Faulkner and Gordon White — anchored the side through the 1909-10 home Tests against England (won 3-2 by South Africa) and the 1910-11 tour of Australia. Vogler took 36 wickets in the 1909-10 home series; Faulkner emerged as the world's best all-rounder by 1910.
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.
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.
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.
Surrey, Western Province
1897-09-15
In 1897, George Lohmann — Test cricket's most efficient bowler ever, with 112 wickets at 10.75 — moved permanently to the British Cape Colony. He had been diagnosed with tuberculosis in late 1892 and had survived through annual winters in South Africa; the disease had progressively worsened. He played one full first-class season for Western Province in 1897-98, returned to England in 1901 to manage a South African tour, and died at Matjiesfontein on 1 December 1901 aged 36. His Test bowling average remains the lowest in cricket history.
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 (Lord Hawke's XI) v South Africa
1896-01-02
Lord Hawke's England tour of South Africa in 1895-96 sailed into the middle of the Jameson Raid — a 600-man British attempt to overthrow Paul Kruger's Transvaal that began on 29 December 1895 and collapsed on 2 January 1896. The cricketers' tour sponsor, Johannesburg mining magnate Abe Bailey, was arrested and fined £2,000. Hawke persuaded Kruger to allow the team to visit the imprisoned raiders in Pretoria gaol; a poker night was arranged before the prisoners returned to their cells.
South Africa v England
1892-03-19
On 19-22 March 1892, Walter Read's privately-organised English XI played South Africa in what was retrospectively granted Test status — only the second Test in South African history after Major Wharton's 1888-89 tour. England won by an innings and 189 runs at Newlands; John Ferris, the Australian-born bowler now qualified for England, took 13 wickets. South Africa's Test cricket had begun fitfully and would not produce a competitive home performance until the next decade.
South Africa v England
1892-03-19
From December 1891 to March 1892 an English side organised and captained by Surrey's Walter Read toured South Africa. The single Test, played at Newlands from 19 to 22 March 1892, was won by England by an innings and 189 runs. JJ Ferris took 13 wickets in the match (6/54 and 7/37); Henry Wood made 134 — the first Test hundred by a wicketkeeper. The match was retrospectively classified as Test cricket and remains South Africa's second Test.
South Africa v England
1889-03-12
On 12-13 March 1889, at St George's Park, Port Elizabeth, South Africa became the third Test-playing nation. England, captained by C Aubrey Smith — later a Hollywood actor — won by 8 wickets inside two days. Smith took 5 for 19 in the first innings, his only Test wickets; Owen Dunell, the South African captain, became the first man to lose a Test toss for South Africa.
South Africa v England
1889-03-25
On 25-26 March 1889 at Newlands, Lancashire's Johnny Briggs took 7 for 17 and 8 for 11 against South Africa — match figures of 15 for 28, of which 14 were bowled and one lbw. It set a new Test record for match wickets that lasted until SF Barnes in 1913, and remains one of the most economical 15-wicket hauls in any form of cricket.
England (cricket) / Hollywood (film)
1889-03-12
C Aubrey Smith captained England in his only Test in 1889, took 5 for 19, and never played another international. Forty-three years later, the same man — now a Hollywood character actor in his seventies — founded the Hollywood Cricket Club, persuaded Boris Karloff and David Niven to play, and lived in Beverly Hills until his death in 1948. The arc from St George's Park to Beverly Hills is one of cricket's strangest biographies.
South African colonies
1889-04-05
Sir Donald Currie, the Scottish-born shipping magnate who funded England's 1888-89 tour of South Africa, donated a trophy at the end of the trip for an inter-colonial cricket competition. The first Currie Cup was contested in 1889-90 — a single-match competition won by Kimberley over Transvaal. It became the foundational competition of South African first-class cricket.
England v South Africa
1889-03-12
Charles Aubrey Smith was a tall fast-medium Sussex amateur with one of the strangest run-ups in cricket history — a sweeping curve that started from deep mid-off or even from behind the umpire and brought him in at the crease from an unexpected angle. WG Grace remarked it was 'rather startling when he suddenly appears at the bowling crease'. In March 1889, Smith captained the first English side to play a Test in South Africa, took 5/19 in the first innings of that Test, and remains the only player ever to captain England in his one and only Test appearance.
South Africa v England
1889-03-26
On 26 March 1889 at Newlands, Cape Town, Augustus Bernard Tancred batted through a South African innings of 47 all out, finishing 26 not out as Johnny Briggs took 8 for 11 around him. The performance was modest in raw terms but historic: Tancred became the first batsman to carry his bat through a completed innings in Test cricket. His unbeaten 26 out of 47 remains the lowest score by anyone carrying their bat through a Test innings, more than 130 years later.
R.G. Warton's XI (England) v South African sides
1888-12-01
The first English cricket tour of South Africa was organised not by MCC or any official body but by a retired British army officer, Major Robert Gardner Warton, working with two Cape Town agents (Billy Simkins and William Milton) and underwritten by the shipping magnate Sir Donald Currie. Warton went to England in 1888 to recruit professionals; the resulting team — captained by the amateur C. Aubrey Smith — sailed in November and played the matches that were later, in 1903, given retrospective Test status as South Africa's first Tests.
Cape Colony cricket clubs
1862-01-01
Cricket in the Cape Colony of South Africa developed significantly through the 1860s, driven by the British garrison, an expanding settler community and the game's adoption by the English-speaking merchant class of Cape Town. The Western Province Cricket Club, founded in the 1860s, became the organising centre of South African cricket, and the grounds at Cape Town and Paarl hosted matches of improving quality that set the stage for the first English touring side's visit in 1888–89.
Cape Town CC and garrison sides
1854-01-01
Cricket had been played in the Cape Colony since at least 1808, but the 1850s saw the first organised club competition beyond the garrison, with civilian clubs establishing grounds in Cape Town and the surrounding farming districts. The Western Province Cricket Club, formed in 1864 from this earlier infrastructure, would produce South Africa's first Test players — but the competitive club culture of the 1850s was its direct antecedent.
n/a
1832-11-15
In November 1832 the Cape Town Cricket Club was formally constituted with a committee, a subscription roll and a leased ground at Green Point Common. The founding was the institutional successor to the garrison cricket that had been documented in 1819 and is the foundation entry of organised civilian cricket in South Africa. Cape Town CC is one of the oldest constituted cricket clubs in the southern hemisphere.
Officers vs 21st Light Dragoons
1819-01-15
On 15 January 1819 officers of the Cape Town garrison played the rank-and-file of the 21st Light Dragoons at cricket on Green Point Common, on the open ground below Signal Hill. The match — recorded in the Cape Town Gazette — is the earliest documented cricket fixture in southern Africa and the founding event of South African cricket history.