Double Headers

100 6: South Africa - Welcome to the triple-header The history of double-headers in South Africa has three phases, the third of which provides our first examples of triple-headers. Let’s take them one at a time. Phase 1 - Before 1959/60 Domestic cricket in South Africa in this period was focussed on the inter- provincial Currie Cup. This began as a challenge competition in 1889/90, and grew in stages to a league competition which from 1946/47 onwards featured nine teams. These nine participants, in chronological order of their first matches in the competition, were Transvaal, Griqualand West (initially known as Kimberley), Western Province, Natal, Eastern Province, Border, Orange Free State, Rhodesia, and North Eastern Transvaal. The Currie Cup was not contested in seasons when South Africa was hosting a major tour from overseas, and in some other seasons too. Among the latter was 1928/29, when the more important business was to put together the strongest possible side to tour England in 1929. To this end, a series of 12 trial matches was arranged between mid-December 1928 and early January 1929, all played on turf wickets in either Durban or Cape Town. At the time only the first seven teams just named contested the Currie Cup, but one of these – Transvaal – was by a distance the strongest, having won or shared the Currie Cup the last four times it had been contested. For the purposes of the trial matches they were judged strong enough to field two separate teams. The trials thus involved eight teams, with four based at each venue. In effect the events at Durban and at Cape Town – in which each team played one match against each of the other teams in its group – constituted two separate tournaments, although the matches themselves were friendlies, with only pride (and individual players’ performances) at stake. The two Transvaal sides were not in fact or in name distinguished as being the province’s First and Second XIs. Both were known simply as ‘Transvaal’, and the Transvaal union split their strength more or less evenly between them, with nine past or future Test cricketers playing in the team at Durban, and six at Cape Town. The Durban and Cape Town squads were mutually exclusive, except that H.G. ‘Nummy’ Deane played in two of his side’s three matches at Durban before moving west to play in two more at Cape Town. As Transvaal captain, and eventual captain of the 1929 tour party, it was perhaps only to be expected that he would take the opportunity to play with, or against, as many candidate-tourists as possible. The tournament at Durban ran from 15 to 26 December, and that at Cape Town from 24 December to 3 January. They thus overlapped over the immediate Christmas period – and sure enough, the two Transvaal sides were both involved in matches during this overlap period, with the side at Durban meeting Border while that at Cape Town took on Eastern Province. Thus we have our first South African double-header.