England vs India
2007-09-05
Just days after Yuvraj Singh's six sixes, Dimitri Mascarenhas hit five sixes off one Yuvraj Singh over in an ODI, in a delicious irony that cricket fans loved.
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.
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 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 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
1968-08-23
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 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 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 v Australia
1948-08-14
On 14 August 1948 at The Oval, Don Bradman walked out to bat in his final Test innings needing only four runs to retire with a Test average of exactly 100. Eric Hollies bowled him a leg-break first ball, which Bradman defended; the second was a googly that he failed to read; it slipped between bat and pad and clipped middle and off. The Don had made a duck. The crowd rose to him; the average settled forever at 99.94, the most famous number in cricket.
England v Australia
1948-08-14
On the first day of the final 1948 Ashes Test, Ray Lindwall produced what Don Bradman called 'the most devastating and one of the fastest spells I ever saw in Test cricket'. Lindwall took 6/20 in 16.1 overs, including a post-lunch burst of 5/8 in 8.1 overs, as England were dismissed for 52 — at the time their lowest Test total at home since 1888. Hutton's 30 was the only score above 6. The collapse set up Bradman's farewell duck and the series clean sweep.
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.
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.
Gentlemen of England, Surrey
1908-04-22
William Gilbert Grace played his last first-class match between 20 and 22 April 1908, opening the innings for the Gentlemen of England against Surrey at The Oval. Aged a few months short of 60, Grace made 15 in the first innings and 25 in the second. It was his 870th first-class appearance, ending a career that began in 1865.
Surrey, England
1904-08-31
Bobby Abel — the small, severely short-sighted Surrey opener known throughout the south of England as 'the Guv'nor' — was the most prolific professional batter of the late 1890s and continued as Surrey's senior batter through the first four seasons of the new century. He had carried his bat for 357 not out against Somerset at the Oval in 1899, then the highest first-class score on an English ground, and remained Surrey's leading run-getter until cataracts forced his retirement in 1904.
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.
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'.
Surrey v Somerset
1899-05-29
From 29 to 31 May 1899, Surrey's 41-year-old opener Bobby Abel batted across most of two days at The Oval to score 357 not out against Somerset, carrying his bat through Surrey's innings of 811. It remains, more than 125 years later, Surrey's highest individual score and the highest by anyone carrying their bat in first-class cricket. Surrey won by an innings and 379.
England v Australia
1896-08-10
On a damp Oval pitch in August 1896, Australia's off-spinner Hugh Trumble took 6 for 59 and 6 for 30 — match figures of 12 for 89 — yet finished on the losing side. Australia, set 111 to win, collapsed to 19 for 8 and were all out for 44, England winning the third Test and the series 2-1. Wisden called Trumble 'on all wickets distinctly the best bowler on the side'; the match remains one of cricket's most celebrated bowling efforts in defeat.
South v North (representative match)
1871-08-01
W.G. Grace's 268 for South against North at The Oval in August 1871 was the highest score of his career to that point and the centrepiece of an extraordinary season in which he became the first cricketer to pass 2,000 first-class runs in a summer. He averaged 78.25 — twice anyone else — and made ten of the 17 first-class centuries scored in England that year.
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.
Gentlemen of the South vs Players of the South
1865-06-22
On 22 June 1865, sixteen days short of his seventeenth birthday, William Gilbert Grace played his first first-class match. Picked by the Gentlemen of the South against the Players of the South at the Oval mainly for his bowling, he and I.D. Walker bowled unchanged through both Players innings. Grace took 13 wickets in the match. Although the Players won by 118 runs, the cricket world had its first sight of the man who would dominate the sport for the next thirty years.
Surrey CCC and MCC
1864-04-01
Through the 1860s both The Oval and Lord's underwent significant improvements to their playing surfaces, pavilions and spectator facilities, reflecting the growing commercial importance of county cricket and the ambition of the MCC and Surrey CCC to provide grounds worthy of the game's premier events. The improvements established both grounds' physical forms that would be recognisable for decades.
Surrey vs other counties
1864-09-01
Surrey, the dominant county of the 1850s, took the unofficial championship one last time in 1864 — winning eight and drawing three of eleven first-class matches — and then collapsed. The retirement of HH Stephenson, William Mortlock, Julius Caesar and Tom Lockyer combined with William Caffyn's emigration to Australia stripped the side of its core. By 1869 Surrey were largely carried by James Southerton's bowling and Ted Pooley's wicket-keeping; the recovery would not come until the early 1870s.
England XI vs Surrey
1862-08-26
Bowling for an England XI against Surrey at the Oval on 26 August 1862, the Kent left-armer Edgar Willsher was no-balled six times in a row by umpire John Lillywhite for raising his hand above the shoulder. Willsher and the eight other professionals in the team marched off the field in protest, leaving the two amateurs stranded. Lillywhite quietly stood down the next day, and within two years the MCC had legalised overarm bowling.
Surrey vs Nottinghamshire
1858-07-01
By the late 1850s the fixture between Surrey and Nottinghamshire had become the most important county match in England, pitting the dominant southern side against the strongest county in the Midlands. Surrey, with Caffyn and Lockyer, faced Nottinghamshire with Parr and Guy; the matches at Trent Bridge and The Oval were the best-attended county cricket of the decade and the closest thing to a championship decider.
Surrey Cricket Club and the Duchy of Cornwall
1855-04-01
In 1855 Surrey Cricket Club renewed its lease on The Oval with the Duchy of Cornwall for a further twenty-one years at a modest rent, invested in re-laying the square and constructed new seating. The improvements secured The Oval's position as England's second ground, a venue fit for the largest fixtures in the country and, eventually, for international cricket.
Surrey CCC
1855-04-01
In 1855 Surrey County Cricket Club secured a fresh 21-year lease on the Kennington Oval, the market-garden site they had occupied since 1845. Under their amateur captain F.P. Miller — first elected to lead the side in 1851 — Surrey would be acclaimed Champion County in 1850, 1854, 1856 and 1857 and recognised as the leading side again in 1858, 1859 and 1864, dominating the decade through professional strength and Miller's tactical command.
Surrey vs All England
1851-08-01
From the early 1850s Surrey, playing at the newly upgraded Oval under the captaincy of the Harrow schoolmaster F.P. Miller, emerged as the dominant county side in England. With Lockyer keeping, Caffyn and Martingell bowling, and a deep professional batting order, they went effectively unchallenged as Champion County through much of the decade, making The Oval the most important cricket ground in England outside Lord's.
n/a
1845-08-22
On 22 August 1845, around a hundred Surrey cricketers met at the Horns Tavern in Kennington and resolved to constitute themselves as the Surrey County Cricket Club. The meeting confirmed the lease of a market garden at Kennington — what would become the Oval — and laid the foundations for one of the strongest first-class counties of the next two centuries.