Double Headers

105 South Africa - Welcome to the triple-header status, and so although both matches were duly played, they did not constitute a first-class double-header. Phase 2 - From 1959/60 to 1998/99 In 1951/52 the Currie Cup competition was split into two Sections, A and B, with one-up one-down promotion and relegation between them. The top four sides from the previous year’s competition – Transvaal (champions again, though only for the first time since the war), Natal, Western Province and Eastern Province – made up Section A, with Border, Griqualand West, North Eastern Transvaal, Orange Free State and Rhodesia in Section B. Unlikely as it may seem, Transvaal finished bottom of Section A in that first season, and were relegated to Section B for 1952/53, to be replaced in the top division by OFS. Transvaal were in Section B for only one season, and things were back to normal for them when in 1958/59 they won Section A with 15 points from six matches. But the other three teams in the Section, Natal, Rhodesia and Western Province, all ended on 13 points. So how to decide which team should be relegated? And at the same time, how best to ensure suitable competition for the players who might be contenders for places in the 1960 touring team to England? To address these questions, the South African Cricket Association [SACA] did some out-of-the-box thinking, as described in Wisden in 1960: “With the 1960 tour of England in view, and the triple tie for second (and last) place in the top section, [SACA] decided to promote Border [winners for the first time of Section B] and to add another team, possibly Transvaal ‘B’, to the lower section”. 86 In other words, with no clear relegation candidate from Section A, it was decided to enlarge that Section to five teams by giving Border their duly- earned promotion, and to keep the B Section up to five teams by bringing a completely new, tenth, side into the competition. But who should that tenth side be? As the teams already competing in the Currie Cup already provided full geographical coverage of the Union of South Africa, as well as neighbouring Southern Rhodesia, there was no obvious geographically-based side available to make up the numbers in Section B. Cricket was not sufficiently well established in South Africa’s other Commonwealth neighbours, nor in its ‘trust territory’ of South West Africa, for these to be serious contenders for the tenth place. In the end, as Wisden had foreshadowed, the lot fell on a second team from Transvaal – though quite why Transvaal is not clear. Maybe it was simply because they had won the Currie Cup in the previous season; or maybe it was because of their historical strength (by this time Transvaal had won the Currie Cup outright on 13 occasions, four more than any other side); or maybe it was their contemporary strength as measured by the number of Test players in their ranks, in which they comfortably surpassed any of their rivals. Whatever the reasons may have been, for the 1959/60 season a second Transvaal side was admitted to Section B of the Currie Cup competition, 86 Wisden 1960, page 879.