The biggest, most impactful controversies that changed cricket forever
149 incidents documented
Bangladesh vs ICC
7 February 2026
Bangladesh refused to play T20 World Cup 2026 in India and were replaced by Scotland after the ICC rejected their security-concern relocation demand.
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.
Punjab Kings
7 May 2026
Yuzvendra Chahal was allegedly captured vaping aboard a Punjab Kings team charter flight en route to Hyderabad ahead of the franchise's IPL 2026 match against Sunrisers Hyderabad on 6 May 2026. The footage surfaced from a behind-the-scenes vlog uploaded to social media by Chahal's PBKS teammate Arshdeep Singh, in which a figure appearing to be Chahal is visible with what observers identified as an electronic cigarette. The clip went viral within hours. Neither Chahal nor Arshdeep issued a public statement; Punjab Kings and the BCCI both remained silent. The controversy arrived just days after the BCCI had formally penalised Rajasthan Royals batter Riyan Parag for vaping in the team dressing room — and before the board had yet issued its blanket vaping ban for IPL venues.
BCCI / IPL franchises
9 May 2026
IPL 2026 matches were suspended and rescheduled in early May 2026 as India-Pakistan geopolitical tensions escalated, marking the first mid-tournament disruption to the IPL since the 2009 security-led move to South Africa. The BCCI briefly paused operations before resuming the competition.
PSL franchises
22 March 2026
Pakistan Super League 2026 became the first major franchise tournament in modern cricket history to be played behind closed doors for reasons unrelated to a pandemic. Citing the economic and logistical impact of the 2026 Iran war, the Government of Pakistan and the PCB announced on 22 March that the season would be confined to Lahore and Karachi and played to empty stadiums to reduce inter-city movement and conserve fuel. The opening ceremony was cancelled. A pink-ball broadcast experiment, fake-crowd-noise audio leaks, and broadcast-quality complaints turned the season into a string of small public-relations crises.
Rajasthan Royals vs Punjab Kings
28 April 2026
Rajasthan Royals captain Riyan Parag was caught on broadcast vaping in the team dressing room during RR's 28 April 2026 match against Punjab Kings — a Level 1 breach of the IPL Code of Conduct (Article 2.21, "conduct that brings the game into disrepute") that led to a 25 per cent match-fee fine and one demerit point. The incident reignited debate about senior-player behaviour and franchise discipline at the IPL's youngest captaincy.
Mumbai Indians
5 May 2026
Hardik Pandya's IPL 2026 with Mumbai Indians has produced the lowest captaincy win rate in MI's franchise history — 40.54 per cent — and a four-match losing streak that left the side on the wrong side of the playoff race. Speculation about whether Rohit Sharma or Suryakumar Yadav should take back the captaincy ran through the season, sharpened by a public Bumrah-Pandya field-placement clash on 16 April and Ravichandran Ashwin's "underwhelmed" comment on broadcast.
Lucknow Super Giants
5 May 2026
Rishabh Pant's first season as Lucknow Super Giants captain has produced LSG's worst IPL campaign — 4 points from 9 matches and bottom of the IPL 2026 table — alongside personal form below his historical standards. Public commentary has called for him to step down from the captaincy and focus on his batting; LSG's franchise leadership has not yet acted.
Sunrisers Hyderabad
5 May 2026
Sunrisers Hyderabad's IPL 2026 produced internal franchise discussion about whether Ishan Kishan should take over the SRH captaincy from Pat Cummins. The Cummins-Kishan internal debate, reported across cricket media, saw the franchise eventually back Cummins through the season — partly on the strength of his bowling contribution, partly on the difficulty of switching captains mid-tournament.
BCCI / IPL franchises
5 May 2026
Cricket reporting in early May 2026 indicated that the BCCI was preparing stricter rules around player partners, family travel, and dressing-room visitors at IPL franchises — reforms collectively described in the press as a 'girlfriend culture' crackdown. The proposals, attributed to BCCI sources but not formally announced, drew immediate public commentary about player welfare, privacy and franchise discipline.
Mumbai Indians vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru
12 April 2026
Rohit Sharma sustained a hamstring injury during MI's 12 April 2026 match against Royal Challengers Bengaluru and missed at least three subsequent matches as a result. The injury, suffered during a stretching shot, came at a moment when MI's struggling 2026 campaign could not afford the loss of its most experienced batter.
Mumbai Indians
April 2026
Ravichandran Ashwin, working as a broadcast analyst during IPL 2026, said publicly that he was "underwhelmed" with Hardik Pandya's Mumbai Indians captaincy — a rare on-air criticism from a fellow active senior international that became a recurring reference point in MI's mid-season captaincy debate.
BCCI / IPL
March 2026
The IPL announced ahead of the 2026 season that it had scrapped the rule mandating a one-match suspension for captains after three slow over-rate offences in a season. Captains and players will now face fines and in-game field-restriction penalties only — a significant softening of the disciplinary regime that has produced multiple over-rate fines without any captain suspensions across IPL 2026.
Sunrisers Hyderabad
2 April 2026
Sunrisers Hyderabad opener Abhishek Sharma was fined and given one demerit point for a Code of Conduct breach in an early IPL 2026 match — one of the season's first formal disciplinary actions, and a marker for what would become a busier-than-usual sanction season for the IPL match referee.
Rajasthan Royals
30 April 2026
Within 48 hours of Riyan Parag's vaping fine, multiple cricket outlets reported Rajasthan Royals' senior leadership considering Yashasvi Jaiswal or Ravindra Jadeja as alternative captaincy options. The franchise eventually issued a statement reaffirming Parag in the role, but the public speculation was the most visible captaincy debate at any IPL franchise outside Mumbai Indians.
WPL franchises
January 2026
The 2026 Women's Premier League was played across only two venues rather than the IPL-style home-and-away format that some sections of cricket commentary had advocated for. The BCCI's logistics-and-broadcast-efficiency framing of the decision drew criticism from women's-cricket advocates who argued that the format was holding the WPL back from its full development potential.
Chennai Super Kings
3 February 2026
Chennai Super Kings CEO Kasi Viswanathan announced on 3 February 2026 that the franchise was actively planning to participate in the WPL when the league next expands its franchise count. MS Dhoni was named as expected to be a key part of the CSK Women's management structure if and when the franchise is admitted.
Rajasthan Royals vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru
10 April 2026
Rajasthan Royals team manager Ravinder Singh "Romi" Bhinder was caught on television using a mobile phone in the team dugout during the franchise's IPL 2026 match against Royal Challengers Bengaluru in Guwahati on 10 April 2026, in breach of Article 4.1.1 of the BCCI's IPL Player and Match Officials Areas (PMOA) Protocols. The BCCI's Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) issued a show-cause notice the same week. After investigation, Bhinder was fined ₹1 lakh and given a formal warning; his explanation that a medical condition required phone access was accepted. No action was taken against fifteen-year-old prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who had been seated next to him.
Various WPL Teams
13 February 2023
Several high-profile international women's cricketers went unsold in the inaugural WPL auction, raising questions about the valuation of experience versus youth in women's T20 leagues.
Australia Women
1 February 2023
Australian captain Meg Lanning took an indefinite break from cricket for undisclosed personal reasons, fuelling widespread speculation and raising questions about privacy in women's sport.
IPL Franchises
31 March 2023
The IPL's Impact Player rule, allowing teams to substitute a player mid-match, was criticized for devaluing all-rounders and turning matches into batting slugfests with 200+ scores becoming routine.
Pakistan Women
1 March 2022
Pakistan women's cricketers have faced systemic barriers including inadequate facilities, cultural restrictions, and poor support structures, with incidents highlighting the challenges periodically making headlines.
India Women
27 October 2022
The BCCI announced equal match fees for men and women cricketers in 2022, but the disparity in central contracts and overall compensation remained massive, sparking debate.
India Women vs England Women
24 September 2022
Jhulan Goswami's farewell match at Lord's was overshadowed by the Mankad controversy, and many felt India's greatest fast bowler deserved a more befitting send-off.
South Africa Women
15 August 2021
South Africa women's cricketers raised allegations of racial discrimination in team selection and treatment, echoing similar issues in the men's setup.
Various / ICC
18 June 2021
The ICC's World Test Championship has been plagued by controversies over its points system, fixture inequity, and whether the format genuinely crowns the best Test team in the world.
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.
India (internal)
8 December 2021
Virat Kohli was stripped of the ODI captaincy and replaced by Rohit Sharma in a move he claimed was made without prior consultation, exposing rifts within the BCCI and Indian cricket's power structure.
Afghanistan (women's cricket)
8 September 2021
After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, women were banned from playing cricket and all sports, raising questions about Afghanistan's ICC membership and the governing body's commitment to gender equality.
Various / ICC
1 December 2020
The ICC's decision to allow home umpires instead of neutral umpires during COVID-19, initially as a temporary measure, reignited debates about umpiring bias in international cricket.
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
13 July 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic forced cricket into bio-secure bubbles, leading to cancelled tours, mental health crises, and the controversial cancellation of England's tour of India's final Test at Old Trafford.
England Women
3 September 2019
England's wicketkeeper-batter Sarah Taylor was forced to retire at just 30 due to severe anxiety, raising important questions about mental health support in women's cricket.
Pakistan
1 November 2019
Pakistan fast bowler Naseem Shah's selection for Test cricket at a claimed age of 16 raised widespread questions about the accuracy of his birth records and age verification in Pakistani cricket.
India (selection controversy)
16 April 2019
After being overlooked for the 2019 World Cup squad in favor of Vijay Shankar — whom selectors described as a '3-dimensional' player — Ambati Rayudu posted a sarcastic tweet about ordering '3D glasses' for watching the World Cup.
Zimbabwe (ICC governance)
18 July 2019
Zimbabwe Cricket was suspended by the ICC due to government interference, reflecting years of administrative chaos and political meddling that had devastated the country's cricketing infrastructure.
Kings XI Punjab vs Rajasthan Royals
25 March 2019
Ravichandran Ashwin ran out Jos Buttler at the non-striker's end in an IPL match, reigniting the centuries-old Mankading debate about the spirit of cricket vs the laws of the game.
England vs New Zealand
14 July 2019
England won the 2019 World Cup Final on a boundary count tiebreaker after both the match and Super Over were tied, amid controversy over a crucial overthrow that awarded England six runs instead of five.
Australia vs South Africa
24 March 2018
Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera using sandpaper to tamper with the ball during the Cape Town Test, leading to bans for Bancroft, captain Steve Smith, and vice-captain David Warner in the most damaging scandal in Australian cricket history.
India Women vs England Women
23 July 2017
India controversially demoted Mithali Raj in the batting order during the World Cup Final at Lord's, a decision that many blamed for India's defeat.
Various
1 January 2017
The 'Umpire's Call' element of DRS, where marginal LBW decisions are upheld even when ball-tracking shows the ball hitting the stumps, has been one of cricket's most divisive ongoing controversies.
Ireland and Afghanistan
22 June 2017
The ICC granted Full Membership and Test status to Ireland and Afghanistan in 2017, but the lack of guaranteed fixtures and the challenges of sustaining Test cricket raised questions about whether the expansion was genuine or merely symbolic.
India (internal)
20 June 2017
Anil Kumble resigned as India head coach citing an 'untenable' relationship with captain Virat Kohli, in one of the most public coach-captain breakdowns in cricket history.
England Women
12 May 2016
England's greatest women's cricketer Charlotte Edwards was allegedly pushed into retirement by the ECB and new coach Mark Robinson as part of a 'new direction' for the team.
Pakistan
15 January 2016
Pakistan fast bowler Mohammad Amir's return to international cricket in 2016 after serving a five-year ban for spot-fixing divided opinion on whether redemption should be offered to match-fixers.
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.
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.
Pakistan
2 September 2015
Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt's return to domestic cricket after his spot-fixing ban attracted fierce criticism, with many arguing a captain who fixed matches should never play again.
West Indies / KKR
1 November 2014
West Indian spinner Sunil Narine was reported for a suspect bowling action multiple times across various tournaments, highlighting the ongoing challenges of policing bowling actions in modern cricket.
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 / ICC / Multiple Nations
1 February 2014
The BCCI's dominance of world cricket through its financial muscle has repeatedly shaped ICC governance, culminating in the controversial 'Big Three' restructuring that gave India, Australia, and England disproportionate control.
West Indies (internal)
1 June 2014
The West Indies cricket team abandoned their tour of India in 2014 over a pay dispute with the WICB, highlighting decades of conflict between the board and its players that contributed to West Indian cricket's decline.
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.
Rajasthan Royals, Chennai Super Kings, IPL
16 May 2013
The 2013 IPL season was rocked by spot-fixing arrests involving Sreesanth and others, and subsequent investigations led to the two-year suspension of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals over betting by team officials.
Various / ICC Rules
1 October 2012
Frequent changes to PowerPlay and fielding restriction rules in ODIs have been controversial, with critics arguing constant tinkering has made the format confusing and excessively batting-friendly.
England vs Pakistan
26 August 2010
A News of the World sting exposed Pakistan captain Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir, and Mohammad Asif for deliberately bowling no-balls at pre-arranged moments during the Lord's Test, leading to criminal convictions and bans.
Pakistan vs Various
3 March 2009
After the 2009 Lahore attack, Pakistan was forced to play its home matches in the UAE for nearly a decade, at enormous financial and emotional cost to the country's cricket.
Pakistan vs Sri Lanka
3 March 2009
Twelve armed gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team bus near Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, injuring six players and killing eight people, ending international cricket in Pakistan for nearly a decade.
Pakistan U19
1 March 2008
Former Pakistan wicketkeeper Rashid Latif publicly alleged that age fraud was rampant in Pakistan U19 cricket, claiming some players in the system were five or more years overage.
Kings XI Punjab vs Mumbai Indians
25 April 2008
Harbhajan Singh slapped Sreesanth after an IPL match in 2008, with Sreesanth photographed crying on the field, in one of the most infamous player-on-player incidents in cricket history.
India vs Various / ICC Governance
24 November 2008
India refused to use the Decision Review System for nearly eight years after its introduction, citing concerns about the technology's reliability, while critics accused the BCCI of blocking progress.
Multiple IPL Franchises
18 April 2008
The Indian Premier League, launched in 2008 by Lalit Modi, revolutionized cricket's commercial model with city-based franchise T20 cricket, creating enormous wealth but also concerns about corruption, player prioritization, and the future of international cricket.
Australia vs India
6 January 2008
Harbhajan Singh was accused of racially abusing Andrew Symonds during the Sydney Test, leading to India threatening to abandon the tour and one of the ugliest diplomatic incidents in cricket history.
ICL (Zee) vs IPL (BCCI)
30 November 2007
The Indian Cricket League, backed by Zee TV's Subhash Chandra, was crushed by the BCCI's retaliatory creation of the IPL, with ICL players banned from all official cricket in a brutal display of institutional power.
Pakistan (coaching staff)
18 March 2007
Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was found dead in his hotel room in Kingston, Jamaica, the day after Pakistan's shock elimination from the 2007 World Cup, sparking a murder investigation and wild conspiracy theories.
Pakistan
1 November 2006
Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar, the first man to bowl at 100 mph, was banned for two years after testing positive for the banned substance nandrolone, though the ban was later overturned on appeal.
England vs Pakistan
20 August 2006
Umpire Darrell Hair penalized Pakistan five runs for ball tampering and changed the ball during the fourth Test at The Oval, leading Pakistan to refuse to take the field and becoming the first team to forfeit a Test match.
England vs Australia
4 August 2005
Ricky Ponting was furious after being run out by England substitute fielder Gary Pratt during the 2005 Ashes, accusing England of abusing the substitute fielder rule to gain an unfair tactical advantage.
India (internal)
6 October 2005
India coach Greg Chappell's leaked email to the BCCI recommending Ganguly's removal as captain created a massive controversy that split Indian cricket and eventually led to Ganguly being dropped entirely.
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.
Kenya
20 March 2003
Kenya's fairy-tale run to the 2003 World Cup semi-final was followed by decades of mismanagement, corruption, and ICC neglect that reduced them from genuine contenders to cricketing irrelevance.
Zimbabwe
10 February 2003
Zimbabwe players Andy Flower and Henry Olonga wore black armbands during the 2003 World Cup to mourn 'the death of democracy' in Zimbabwe, in a courageous protest against Robert Mugabe's regime.
Pakistan vs New Zealand
8 May 2002
New Zealand abandoned their tour of Pakistan in 2002 after a bomb blast outside their hotel in Karachi killed 14 people, marking one of the earliest security-related disruptions to international cricket.
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
5 December 2000
Former India captain Mohammad Azharuddin was banned for life from cricket after a CBI investigation found he had been involved in match-fixing, ending the career of one of India's most stylish batsmen.
Bangladesh vs Pakistan
1999-05-31
On May 31, 1999, Bangladesh — playing in their debut World Cup — beat tournament favourites Pakistan by 62 runs at Northampton. Khaled Mahmud (3/31 and 27 with the bat) was Player of the Match. The result remains shrouded in match-fixing suspicion that Pakistan's later Justice Qayyum report partially supported.
Australia vs South Africa
17 June 1999
South Africa's Lance Klusener hit two fours off successive balls to bring the scores level, but a catastrophic run out of Allan Donald off the last ball sent Australia through on net run rate in one of cricket's greatest ever finishes.
West Indies
1998-11-05
On November 5, 1998, West Indies' touring squad — heading to South Africa for their first post-apartheid tour — refused to board the connecting flight from London to Johannesburg. Captain Brian Lara and vice-captain Carl Hooper led nine players in a stand-off with the West Indies Cricket Board over allowances and tour fees. The team holed up at Heathrow's Excelsior Hotel for almost a week. The board sacked Lara and Hooper, then reinstated them, and the squad arrived in South Africa demoralised and unprepared. They lost the Test series 5-0.
India (internal)
1 January 1997
Sachin Tendulkar's brief and unhappy stint as India captain in the late 1990s, replacing Azharuddin, was marked by poor results, factional politics, and the eventual return of captaincy to Azharuddin.
India vs Pakistan
15 October 1997
Inzamam-ul-Haq charged into the crowd with a bat after being persistently taunted by an Indian spectator with a megaphone during a Sahara Cup match in Toronto.
Sri Lanka vs Australia / West Indies
1996-02-17
After a Tamil Tigers truck bomb killed 91 people at Colombo's Central Bank on January 31, 1996, both Australia and West Indies refused to travel to Sri Lanka for their 1996 World Cup group matches. The ICC awarded Sri Lanka both games on forfeit — a decision that propelled the eventual champions into the knockouts unbeaten on points.
India vs Sri Lanka
1996-03-13
On March 13, 1996, an estimated 110,000 spectators at Eden Gardens watched India collapse from 98/1 to 120/8 chasing 252 against Sri Lanka. As the Indian innings disintegrated, sections of the crowd set fire to the stands and threw bottles onto the field. Match referee Clive Lloyd halted play, returned briefly, and finally awarded the semi-final to Sri Lanka. Vinod Kambli walked off in tears.
Sri Lanka vs Various
1 January 1996
Muttiah Muralitharan's bowling action was questioned repeatedly over a decade, leading to fundamental changes in cricket's throwing laws and biomechanical testing protocols.
India vs Sri Lanka
13 March 1996
The 1996 World Cup semi-final at Eden Gardens was abandoned after Indian fans rioted, hurling bottles and setting fires when India's batting collapsed against Sri Lanka's spinners.
Australia vs Sri Lanka
26 December 1995
Australian umpire Darrell Hair no-balled Muttiah Muralitharan seven times for throwing during the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, igniting one of cricket's longest-running controversies.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
Multiple (WSC vs Establishment Cricket)
24 November 1977
Media mogul Kerry Packer signed 51 of the world's best cricketers to a rival competition after being denied TV broadcast rights, fundamentally transforming professional cricket.
India vs West Indies
21-25 April 1976
At Sabina Park in April 1976, three weeks after India's chase of 406 at Port of Spain, Bishan Bedi declared India's first innings closed at 306/6 and effectively forfeited the second at 97 — five Indian batsmen recorded as "absent hurt" — in protest at what he considered intimidatory short-pitched bowling. Anshuman Gaekwad was hit behind the ear and hospitalised, Brijesh Patel struck in the mouth, and Vishwanath's finger broken. It was Clive Lloyd's first Test as captain with four genuine fast bowlers — Roberts, Holding, Daniel and Holder — and the moment is generally identified as the start of the West Indian pace strategy of the next two decades.
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.
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.
West Indies vs Various
1966-07-01
Charlie Griffith of Barbados was the fastest bowler in the world in the mid-1960s, but his career was permanently shadowed by accusations that his bouncer and yorker were thrown rather than bowled. Several senior umpires, players and administrators — including Don Bradman — stated publicly that Griffith threw; the West Indies Cricket Board and ICC declined to take formal action. His career never fully recovered from the controversy.
ICC
1965-07-15
At its 1965 annual meeting at Lord's, the Imperial Cricket Conference renamed itself the International Cricket Conference, allowing for the first time the admission of countries from outside the British Commonwealth. The change opened the door to associate membership and was the most significant administrative reform in the game since the Conference's founding in 1909.
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.
Barbados vs India
1962-03-17
On 17 March 1962, Indian captain Nari Contractor was struck on the right temple by a short-pitched delivery from 23-year-old Charlie Griffith in a tour match between Barbados and India at Kensington Oval. The blow fractured Contractor's skull, sent him into a three-day coma and required emergency surgery to relieve pressure on the brain. He survived but never played another Test. He was 28.
West Indies
1960-09-15
After more than three decades of West Indies Test cricket being captained exclusively by white men, Frank Worrell was appointed as the regular captain for the 1960-61 tour of Australia. The decision followed a year-long campaign by C.L.R. James in the Trinidad newspaper The Nation, which framed the colour bar in West Indies captaincy as a colonial relic that had to fall. Worrell would justify the choice with a tour that revived Test cricket and earned the team a half-million-strong farewell parade in Melbourne.
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 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.
Australia v England
1946-11-29
On the first day of the 1946-47 Ashes, Don Bradman — making his Test return after eight years and visibly out of touch on 28 — chopped a ball from Bill Voce that flew chest-high to Jack Ikin at second slip. England appealed for the catch; umpire George Borwick gave it not out, ruling the ball had bumped from the ground. Bradman did not walk. He went on to make 187, England were beaten by an innings and 332, and Hammond's relationship with the Australian captain never recovered. The wicket-that-never-was framed the entire series.
England / Gloucestershire
1937-11-15
In November 1937 Wally Hammond — the leading professional batsman of his era — was accepted by MCC as an amateur, opening the door to the England captaincy he received six months later for the 1938 Ashes. The change crystallised inter-war debates about the amateur-professional divide and the unwritten rule that England's captain be amateur.
India
1936-06-21
On 21 June 1936, midway through India's tour of England, Lala Amarnath — the country's first Test centurion — was ordered home by tour captain the Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram (Vizzy) and tour management. The decision, made on disciplinary grounds that almost no contemporary account took at face value, became one of the worst administrative episodes in Indian cricket and set the political tone for the BCCI's later reform.
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.
MCC / global
1935-04-01
Two and a half years after Adelaide, the MCC formally amended the Laws of Cricket to give umpires the power to stop bowling that constituted a 'direct attack' on the batsman. The 1935 amendment was the legal full stop on Bodyline. Fast leg theory, until then merely 'against the spirit of the game,' became something an umpire could call dead and intervene against. Bouncers became a rationed weapon for the next two generations.
England
1934-03-21
On 21 March 1934 Douglas Jardine wrote to The Cricketer that he had 'neither the desire nor the intention' of playing in the upcoming home Ashes series. The announcement, taken as a quiet resignation, removed the architect of Bodyline from the field before Australia returned to England — a precondition Australia's Board had implicitly demanded.
West Indies
1934-06-01
From the early 1930s English newspapers, and then much of the cricketing world, called George Headley 'the Black Bradman.' Headley, polite and reserved, never publicly objected; in private and in CLR James's account, he and many West Indian writers preferred to invert the formula — Bradman as 'the white Headley.' The nickname is a small case study in how race coloured even the most generous compliments paid to inter-war Caribbean cricketers.
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.
Australia vs England
2 December 1932
The 1932-33 Bodyline series: England captain Douglas Jardine directed Harold Larwood to bowl short-pitched leg-theory at batsmen's bodies to stop Don Bradman. Nearly caused a diplomatic rupture between England and Australia; England won 4-1.
England
1932-08-12
In August 1932 the MCC selectors confirmed Douglas Jardine as England's captain for the 1932-33 tour of Australia, a decision contested at the highest levels of English cricket and one that — combined with Plum Warner's appointment as tour manager — would set the conditions for the Bodyline series.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
Australia
1912-08-22
Australia's 1912 Triangular side, captained by 42-year-old Syd Gregory after the Big Six refused to tour, was the weakest Australian Test party ever sent to England. They lost the deciding Test at the Oval, finished second in the tournament and effectively lost a Test generation overnight.
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.
England, Australia, South Africa
15 June 1909
The Imperial Cricket Conference was founded on 15 June 1909 at Lord's, London, by England, Australia and South Africa — the three Test-playing nations. It became the ICC, first governing body of world cricket.
New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland
1905-05-06
On 6 May 1905, at Wesley College in Melbourne, the New South Wales Cricket Association and the Victorian Cricket Association founded the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket — the body that would become Cricket Australia. South Australia refused to join because the constitution gave players no representation; the dispute would eventually trigger the 1912 Big Six walkout.
Nottinghamshire, England
1903-05-19
Arthur Shrewsbury, the Nottinghamshire opener whom W.G. Grace called the only contemporary he would 'rather have in my side', shot himself at his sister's home in Gedling on 19 May 1903 aged 47. Convinced he was incurably ill — though doctors had repeatedly told him otherwise — he had bought a revolver in mid-April and shot himself first in the chest, then in the head when the first wound proved non-fatal. The Notts side at Hove abandoned their match the next morning.
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.
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.
England (Bligh's XI) v Australia
1882-12-25
What is actually inside the Ashes urn? For over a century the standard answer was 'a burnt cricket bail', but in 1998 the 8th Earl of Darnley's daughter-in-law claimed the contents were the burnt remains of a lady's veil, possibly belonging to Florence Morphy or Lady Janet Clarke. MCC, which has had the urn since 1927, has never officially confirmed either version. After a 2006-07 examination an MCC official said it was '95 per cent certain' the contents were a bail — leaving 5 per cent of cricket's most famous mystery still open.
Nottinghamshire CCC v Captain Henry Holden (committee)
1881-06-01
In the summer of 1881 seven of Nottinghamshire's leading professionals — Alfred Shaw, Arthur Shrewsbury, Fred Morley, John Selby, William Barnes, Wilfrid Flowers and (briefly) Mordecai Sherwin — refused to play for the county after a dispute with the secretary, Captain Henry Holden, over fixtures, pay and the right to a guaranteed benefit. The strike crippled Notts' season, was the first major industrial action in English cricket, and laid the groundwork for the formal employment contracts that professionals would gradually win across the next two decades.
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.
Amateurs v Professionals
1880-07-05
Through the 1880s, English cricket maintained the strict separation of Gentlemen (amateurs, with initials before the surname) from Players (professionals, with initials after). The annual Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's drew vast crowds; behind it lay separate dressing rooms, separate gates, and the awkward fact that some 'amateurs' (notably WG Grace) earned more from cricket than any professional. The Notts strike of 1881 was the era's most public eruption of this contradiction.
Australia (NSW) vs England
1879-02-08
On 8 February 1879 a crowd at the Association Ground in Sydney invaded the pitch after Victorian umpire George Coulthard gave Billy Murdoch run out. Lord Harris was struck across the back by a stick or whip, his teammate Monkey Hornby seized the assailant and frog-marched him to the pavilion, and 2,000 of the 10,000 spectators joined the disorder. It is cricket's first international riot.
New South Wales v England
1879-02-08
On 8 February 1879 — strictly outside the 1880s but the curtain-raiser to the decade — about 2,000 Sydney spectators invaded the pitch after Australian batsman Billy Murdoch was given run out by the English-engaged Victorian umpire George Coulthard. Lord Harris, the English captain, was struck with a stick; AN Hornby's shirt was torn off; play was suspended. The riot poisoned Anglo-Australian cricket relations for years and explains why no Test was scheduled in England before September 1880.
England in Australia and New Zealand
1876-11-01
James Lillywhite's 1876-77 tour was the first English tour of Australia run as a private commercial venture rather than on invitation. The professionals travelled for a share of the gate; that share was repeatedly disputed throughout the trip, and the tour returned home with a slim profit only after months of haggling with local agents.
Cambridgeshire vs major counties
1869-09-01
Cambridgeshire, briefly one of England's strongest counties in the mid-1860s thanks to the batting of Tom Hayward and Bob Carpenter, fell into rapid decline at the end of the decade when their leading professionals were poached by wealthier counties and the county's small financial base left it unable to compete. The episode illustrated a structural flaw in county cricket — small counties with good players but no money could not survive in competition with wealthy urban counties — that prefigured the formal two-tier county cricket structure of later generations.
English professional bowlers and MCC
1845-06-01
Through the 1840s a growing number of English professional bowlers were experimenting with deliveries that raised the bowling arm above the established roundarm height, daring umpires to no-ball them. The debate that would culminate in Edgar Willsher's famous walk-off in 1862 and MCC's legalisation of overarm in 1864 had its roots in the 1840s, when the commercial success of the All-England Eleven touring matches put a premium on pace and hostility that roundarm could not always provide.
MCC Committee
1841-05-01
The MCC committee in 1841 further tightened the maximum-stakes rule introduced in 1807, responding to renewed concerns that bookmakers operating at the Lord's ground were corrupting the conduct of matches. The committee's minutes record a formal resolution to exclude known betting men from the ground and to forbid players from receiving money from outside parties during matches — an early attempt to codify what would later become cricket's anti-corruption framework.
Eton vs Harrow
1829-07-01
After several years of escalating crowd misbehaviour and post-match excess, the headmasters of Eton and Harrow agreed in 1829 to suspend their schools' annual cricket match at Lord's. The fixture, which Lord Byron had played in for Harrow in the inaugural game of 1805 and which had been annual since 1822, was not played again until 1832. The interruption is the only voluntary suspension in the long history of the oldest schoolboy fixture in the world.
Sheffield vs Nottingham
1822-08-12
The first major match at Sheffield's Darnall ground in 1822, a 15 of Sheffield v 11 of Nottingham fixture, was marred when a temporary spectators' stand collapsed under the weight of the crowd, injuring nearly two dozen people. The incident was the first known crowd-safety disaster in English cricket and a foretaste of Lord's-era complaints about hastily built spectator scaffolding.
Various private elevens at Lord's Middle Ground
1813-06-09
In the three years between 1811 and 1813, with the Napoleonic War at its height and the country bleeding men and money, only three senior cricket matches were played in England — all of them at Lord's Middle Ground in Marylebone. The fixture lists of the previous century shrank to a handful of private challenges between the elevens of Aislabie, Beauclerk, Osbaldeston and Bligh. County cricket effectively ceased to exist; the great clubs of Kent, Surrey and Hampshire scarcely fielded a senior side. Cricket survived only through the obstinacy of a few amateurs at Lord's.