ICC / Various Nations
1 January 2020
The ICC's proposal to reduce Test matches from five days to four sparked fierce opposition from players and purists who argued it would fundamentally alter cricket's oldest format.
Various
1 January 2019
The ICC expressed growing concerns about the vulnerability of Test cricket involving lower-ranked nations to match-fixing, as several suspicious matches were investigated.
Australia vs New Zealand (first), Various
27 November 2015
The introduction of day-night Test cricket with a pink ball was hailed as an innovation to save Test cricket but faced resistance from players concerned about visibility, ball behavior, and safety under lights.
India vs Pakistan
1999-02-07
On February 7, 1999, Anil Kumble took all ten Pakistani second-innings wickets — 10 for 74 in 26.3 overs — to become only the second bowler in Test history to claim a 'Perfect Ten' after Jim Laker (1956). India won by 212 runs.
Australia vs West Indies
1993-01-05
On January 5, 1993, a 23-year-old Brian Lara made his maiden Test hundred at the SCG — and turned it into 277 off 372 balls before being run out. The innings, his fifth Test, announced the arrival of the most exciting batter of the 1990s.
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.
India, Pakistan
1987-03-07
Sunil Gavaskar reached 10,000 Test runs against Pakistan at Ahmedabad in March 1987, becoming the first batsman in history to cross the mark and recalibrating cricket's notion of longevity.
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.
West Indies
1985-06-30
Standing six feet eight inches, Joel Garner — 'Big Bird' — bowled the most accurate Test yorker of the 1980s, took 259 Test wickets at 20.97 and was the second pillar of Clive Lloyd's pace cartel alongside Malcolm Marshall.
West Indies
1985-02-15
Viv Richards inherited the West Indies captaincy from Clive Lloyd in 1985 and led the side through a six-year peak in which he never lost a Test series — a captaincy distinction unique in modern cricket history.
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.
Australia
1984-12-15
Allan Border inherited a broken Australian Test side from Kim Hughes in 1984 and, by the end of the decade, had rebuilt it into the team that would win the 1989 Ashes 4-0 and dominate world cricket for the next twenty years.
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.
Pakistan, India
1983-01-14
Javed Miandad made his career-best 280 not out at Niaz Stadium, Hyderabad, against India in January 1983 — the innings ended only when captain Imran Khan declared with Miandad 20 short of a triple century.
Pakistan, India
1982-12-30
Imran Khan's 8 for 60 in the second innings at Karachi headlined a 40-wicket series in which he averaged 13.95 — one of the most dominant individual fast-bowling performances in Test history.
Pakistan
1982-04-01
Imran Khan's first captaincy stint between 1982 and 1989 transformed Pakistan from a talented but inconsistent side into the team that would win the 1992 World Cup and dominate the 1990s.
India, Sri Lanka
1982-09-17
Duleep Mendis became the only batsman in Test history to score identical centuries — 105 and 105 — in both innings of a Test, in Sri Lanka's first ever Test in India at Madras in September 1982.
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
1981-07-07
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.
Pakistan
1980-01-01
Through the 1980s, a generation of Pakistani fast bowlers — Sarfraz Nawaz, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis — perfected and exported reverse swing, the technique that would dominate Test cricket for the next two decades.
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.
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.
Australia vs West Indies
1960-12-14
On 14 December 1960 at the Gabba, Australia and West Indies produced the first tied Test in the 83-year history of the format, with West Indies' Joe Solomon running out Ian Meckiff from side-on with the scores level and one ball remaining. Wes Hall bowled the final eight-ball over with Australia needing six and three wickets in hand; the over produced two run-outs, a single, a missed catch and a tie. The result revived a flagging Test format and gave the world a template for how the game could be played.
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'.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
New Zealand v England
1929-12-15
In New Zealand's first home Test series in 1929-30, the 26-year-old Stewie Dempster scored 136 in the second Test at Wellington, partnered by Jackie Mills's 117 in an opening stand of 276 — the highest first-wicket partnership made in a Test by any country to that point and the founding statement of New Zealand Test batting.
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.
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.
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 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.
Australia and English county opposition
1926-07-15
From 1921 onward, the Sydney crowds called Charlie Macartney 'The Governor-General' for the way he batted as if owning the ground. The nickname stuck across cricket and was the source of dozens of contemporary one-liners — including his much-quoted aside to a slip fielder before destroying him for six.
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.
Australia v England
1925-02-27
On Test debut at the SCG in February 1925, the 33-year-old leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett took 5 for 45 and 6 for 37 against Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Hendren. The 11 for 82 was, and remains, one of the great Test debut performances by a wrist-spinner — a late beginning to a career that would yield 216 Test wickets.
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.
New South Wales and Australia
1925-12-30
Through 1925-26 the 28-year-old Alan Kippax of New South Wales established himself as the heir to the Trumper-Macartney tradition of Australian batting stylists, scoring 1,309 first-class runs at 65.45 and earning the first of his 22 Test caps.
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.
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.
Australia
1914-02-15
Charlie Macartney established himself in the 1910-1914 period as Australia's most dashing pre-war stroke-maker after Trumper — a small, neat batsman with a back-foot drive so destructive that English crowds would later nickname him 'the Governor-General' for the way he carried himself at the crease.
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 v Australia
1899-06-15
On 15-17 June 1899, in only his second Test match, the 21-year-old Victor Trumper played a 135 not out at Lord's that announced him as the most original batsman in cricket. Coming in at 59 for 3, he batted across two days, drove and cut Bobby Peel's spiritual heir Wilfred Rhodes through every gap, and helped Australia to an innings victory and a 1-0 Ashes lead they would not surrender. Within a year he was Australia's most-photographed sportsman.
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.
Australia v England
1898-01-01
On 1-3 January 1898, the 20-year-old Adelaide left-hander Clem Hill came in at 6 for 58 and made 188 — his maiden Test century, and still the highest Ashes Test score by a player under 21. Australia recovered to 520 and won by an innings. The innings established Hill as the central figure of Australian batting between Trumper and Bradman; he would average 39 across 49 Tests until 1912.
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 v Australia
1896-06-22
In June 1896, despite Ranjitsinhji topping the English first-class averages, Lord Harris — president of MCC and effectively the selector for the Lord's Test — refused to pick him for the first Test against Australia, arguing only 'native-born' Englishmen should represent the side. England lost. The Lancashire selectors who chose the Old Trafford Test simply ignored Harris and picked Ranji, who marked his debut with 62 and 154 not out, and the precedent of an English-born-only Test team was broken forever.
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
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.
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
1880-09-22
George Frederick 'Fred' Grace, the youngest of the cricketing Grace brothers, played his only Test at The Oval in September 1880, took the most famous deep catch of the 19th century, and was dead of pneumonia two weeks later, aged 29. His joint appearance with WG and EM is the only time three brothers have played together in a Test; the family lost their youngest within a fortnight of the historic match.