This article describes the history of South African cricket from its known beginnings until the end of the First World War in 1918.
Test and first-class cricket were both introduced retrospectively to South Africa in the 1888–89 season by the elevation in status of two matches played by an English touring team against a South African national team. At the same time, the Currie Cup was donated by Sir Donald Currie for the domestic championship and this was first contested in the 1889–90 season. Playing standards rose and a number of provincial teams were able to challenge for the championship, including Eastern Province, Griqualand West, Natal, Transvaal and Western Province. South Africa became increasingly involved in international cricket and the national team undertook six overseas tours (five to England and one to Australia) before 1914. Eight teams, seven English and one Australian, toured South Africa during the period.
Beginnings
European colonisation of southern Africa began on Tuesday, 6 April 1652 when the Dutch East India Company established a settlement called the Cape Colony on Table Bay, near present-day Cape Town. Cape Colony slowly expanded along the coast and into the hinterland throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. It was founded as a victualling station for the Dutch East Indies trade route but soon acquired an importance of its own due to its good farmland and mineral wealth.
There was no significant British interest in South Africa until the colony was seized by British forces in 1795 under General Sir James Craig during the French Revolutionary War, the Netherlands having fallen to France in the same year. British policy was to secure the colony against French encroachment in the name of the Dutch Stadtholder Willem V. Under the terms of the short-lived Treaty of Amiens in 1803, Cape Colony was handed back to the Netherlands, then known as the Batavian Republic. In 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars proper now under way, British forces again invaded and seized Cape Colony, this time with permanent designs on it. The whole territory was formally ceded to Great Britain in 1814 by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 and administered as Cape Colony until it joined the Union of South Africa in 1910.
It is believed that cricket was introduced to South Africa by Craig's occupying force. A similar scenario had arisen throughout the British Empire. English soldiers and sailors were the pioneers of the game in numerous foreign lands. One of Craig's officers was Charles Anguish (sometimes known as Charles Clarke) who had been a member of the White Conduit Club and was an early member of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Anguish had played in 32 first-class matches between 1788 and 1795 when he departed for the Cape. He died there, by committing suicide, in May 1797.
It is generally supposed that Anguish organised matches in the colony but the earliest definite reference to cricket there is dated 1808, two years after the re-occupation. A newspaper called The Cape Town Gazzette and African Advertiser carried notice that:
A grand match at cricket will be played for 1,000 dollars a side on Tuesday, January 5, 1808 between the officers of the artillery mess, having Colonel Austen of the 60th Regiment, and the officers of the Colony, with General Clavering. The wickets are to be pitched at 10 o'clock.
The venue for the 1808 match is unknown but there was another military match at Green Point in 1810 between the Ordnance and the 87th Regiment. There is a Green Point club, formed in the 1890s, but it is not certain if it is based at the same venue. If so, then it is the oldest known venue in South Africa.
Early developments
Long before apartheid, cricket was considered "a white man's pastime" in South Africa but there is evidence of it being played by Bantus and Hottentots in 1854. Nevertheless, the surviving records are essentially about games played by whites only. H. Rider Haggard suggested that it became "an obsession" in the white military community and complained about officers insisting on taking cricket gear with them on the ill-fated Isandlwana mission in 1879.