South Africa's First Test — Port Elizabeth, 1889

Cricket had been played in southern Africa since the 1820s. Donald Currie, the shipping magnate, had funded the trophy that bears his name (the Currie Cup) for inter-colonial cricket from 1889. Major Warton's tour was the first organised effort to test South African cricket against an English XI, and the matches were upgraded to Tests by later generations of historians.

The English party had been touring since December, playing matches in the Cape colony, Natal and the Transvaal. By March they had moved to Port Elizabeth for what would become the first Test.

The 1888-89 English tour of South Africa had been organised privately by Major R Gardner Warton, with Donald Currie as patron. The team — captained by C Aubrey Smith of Sussex and including Johnny Briggs of Lancashire — toured from December 1888 to March 1889. Two of the matches, at Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, were retrospectively granted Test status.

The Port Elizabeth match was played on a green matting wicket — the standard South African surface of the era. South African captain Owen Dunell, an Eton-and-Oxford educated landowner, won the toss and chose to bat. South Africa were dismissed for 84 (Smith 5/19, Briggs 4/39). England replied with 148. South Africa managed only 129 in their second innings. England chased down 67 for 2 and won by 8 wickets, the match completed by 3:30 on the second day.

Aubrey Smith, then 25, never played another Test. His five wickets at Port Elizabeth made him one of the only men in cricket history to captain his country in his only Test, take a five-fer in his only Test, and never appear again. He became a London stage actor in the 1890s, then a Hollywood character actor in the 1930s, and founded the Hollywood Cricket Club in 1932.

Dunell scored 26* in the second innings, batting through the innings (carrying his bat) — a quirky South African first. He played one more Test before his career ended. The match was the start of South African Test cricket; the next Test would not come until 1891.

“An English XI under Mr Aubrey Smith yesterday vanquished South Africa.”

South Africa won their first Test against England eighteen years later, in 1906 at the Old Wanderers in Johannesburg. They became permanent members of the international cricket calendar. Aubrey Smith stayed on in South Africa briefly after the tour, then returned to England, took up acting, and went on to a Hollywood career that included roles in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), The Four Feathers (1939) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He was knighted in 1944.

Dunell returned to his estate near Port Elizabeth and his administrative work for South African cricket. He died in 1929.