South African Cricket Grounds Guide: The Big Five

Five grounds carry most of the Test cricket played here, and no two of them ask the same question. One sits nearly two kilometres above the sea. One sits at the foot of a mountain and gets a wind so reliable that locals named it after a doctor. One is so humid in February that the ball swings for a session and a half after it stops being new. Playing all five in a summer is one of the harder tours in the game, and it is why South African conditions have a reputation for producing bowlers rather than accumulating batting records.

The Wanderers, Johannesburg

The Bullring. Steep banked stands on all sides, a crowd close enough to be heard clearly by the players, and an atmosphere that is the loudest in the country by a distance.

What the altitude does

The defining feature is altitude. Johannesburg sits at roughly 1,750 metres above sea level, and the air up there is thin enough to change the game measurably. A struck ball travels further, so boundaries that would be caught at the rope elsewhere clear it here. A bowler gets less conventional swing, because swing depends on air moving over the seam and there is less air to move. And a ball bowled with the same effort arrives faster and higher, because the drag that would normally slow it is reduced.

What that produces is a ground where the movement comes off the pitch rather than through the air. The surface is usually hard with a covering of grass, and it offers seam and carry from the first morning. Batters who play too far from their body get found out early. Batters who survive the new ball can score very quickly indeed, because the outfield is fast and the boundaries are reachable.

The day nearly nine hundred runs were scored

The match everybody names is the fifth one-day international against Australia in March 2006. Australia made 434 for four, a total that had never been made in a fifty-over international before, and South Africa chased it. Herschelle Gibbs made 175 from 111 balls, Graeme Smith got the chase started at a run a ball, and the winning run came off the second-last delivery with one wicket standing. Four hundred and thirty-eight. It is still the game South Africans measure other games against, and it happened at the Wanderers because it could only have happened at the Wanderers.

The ground has produced hard Test cricket too. In one Test against India the surface deteriorated to the point where the umpires suspended play over safety and consulted with the captains before the match resumed. That is the other side of a pitch with pace and carry, and it is the risk a highveld curator carries every summer.

Newlands, Cape Town

The best-looking cricket ground in the world, and the argument against it is thin. Table Mountain and Devil's Peak fill the frame behind the northern end, there are oak trees along the boundary, and the Test match here traditionally starts in the first days of January.

Wind, and what it does to the ball

Two things dominate play. The first is the wind. The Cape south-easter, known locally as the Cape Doctor, blows hard through the southern summer and is a genuine tactical factor. A bowler running with it gets extra pace onto the ball; a bowler running into it gets swing that would not otherwise be there, and captains set their attack around which end suits whom. On a still day at Newlands the pitch is a batting surface. On a windy one it is not.

The second is the pitch itself, which is generally slower than the highveld grounds and takes some turn as a Test wears on. Newlands has produced more finger-spin wickets than any other major ground here. It has also produced some of the most sudden collapses in modern Test cricket. In a Test against Australia in 2011, twenty-three wickets fell in a single day and Australia were bowled out for 47.

What the ground is remembered for

Newlands is also where the third Test of the 2018 Australia series was played, and what happened there is set out in our guide to the South Africa and Australia rivalry.

Weather interruptions are common in Cape Town in January, which means Newlands sees more revised targets than most grounds. If the calculation confuses you, we have an explainer on how the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method works.

SuperSport Park, Centurion

Grass banks, a party atmosphere, and the venue where South Africa's home record is at its most intimidating. Centurion sits on the highveld too, a little lower than Johannesburg but high enough that the same physics apply, and the pitch has historically been the greenest in the country.

That combination is what makes it hard for touring sides. A seaming surface at altitude means the ball moves off the pitch at speed rather than moving slowly in the air, and it does so for longer than a visiting batting line-up expects. Sides arriving from the subcontinent have found the first session here about as unfamiliar as cricket gets.

The forfeited-innings Test

The match that defined Centurion had nothing to do with the pitch. In January 2000 the final Test against England had been almost entirely washed out. To manufacture a result, the two captains agreed that South Africa would declare and each side would forfeit an innings, leaving England a target on the last day. England chased 249 and won by two wickets, and at the time it was praised as an act of imagination that saved a dead rubber. Months later, during the match-fixing investigation, it emerged that the South African captain Hansie Cronje had been approached and paid by a bookmaker, and the declaration was recast entirely. It remains the only Test in which both sides forfeited an innings, and it is one of the strangest entries in the sport's records.

Kingsmead, Durban

Sea level, and you feel it. Durban in high summer is hot and extremely humid, and heavy, moist air is the best friend a swing bowler has. The ball moves late here, and it keeps moving long after it has stopped being new. Bowlers who rely on wrist position and a good seam do well at Kingsmead. Bowlers who rely on pace off the pitch tend not to, because the surface is traditionally the slowest and lowest of the five, with a tendency towards uneven bounce as a match goes on.

There is also a sea breeze off the Indian Ocean that behaves differently from the Cape wind, less a constant gale and more a shift that arrives in the afternoon and changes which end is worth bowling from.

The Timeless Test

Kingsmead holds one of the great oddities in Test history. In March 1939, England played South Africa here in a Test with no time limit, played to a finish. It lasted ten days. England, set 696 to win, had reached 654 for five when the match was abandoned as a draw so the tourists could catch the boat home from Cape Town. It is the longest first-class match ever played, and the fact that it produced no result after ten days is the single strongest argument anyone has ever made for the five-day limit.

St George's Park, Gqeberha

The oldest of them, and the most distinctive. The first Test match ever played in this country was staged at St George's Park in March 1889, which makes it one of the small handful of grounds that were there at the beginning of international cricket.

The pitch is slow and low, closer in character to a subcontinental surface than anything else in the country. Spinners are worth picking here in a way they often are not at Centurion or the Wanderers, and Test matches at St George's Park tend to be attritional. Reverse swing arrives earlier than at the other grounds. Scoring rates are lower.

The brass band

What everyone remembers, though, is the band. A brass band plays on the grass embankment through every day of cricket at St George's Park, taking requests, following the state of the game, and providing a running commentary in music that no other Test ground in the world offers. It has been part of the ground for decades and it is, more than the pitch or the pavilion, what the venue is known for internationally.

The five compared

Ground	City	Setting	What the pitch does	Defining match
The Wanderers	Johannesburg	Highveld, around 1,750m	Pace, carry, seam off the surface; less air swing	438, the 2006 ODI against Australia
Newlands	Cape Town	Coastal, mountain backdrop	Slower, takes turn late; wind-dependent swing	Australia bowled out for 47 in 2011
SuperSport Park	Centurion	Highveld, grass banks	Greenest surface, seam at pace	The 2000 forfeited-innings Test
Kingsmead	Durban	Sea level, humid	Late swing, low bounce, uneven late	The 1939 Timeless Test
St George's Park	Gqeberha	Coastal, oldest venue	Slow and low, helps spin and reverse	The first Test played here, 1889

If the pitch terminology is unfamiliar, our explainer on the different types of cricket pitch covers what green, dry and abrasive surfaces actually do to a ball.

The grounds beyond the five

International cricket is not confined to the Test venues. Buffalo Park in East London, Boland Park in Paarl, Senwes Park in Potchefstroom, the Mangaung Oval in Bloemfontein, the Diamond Oval in Kimberley and Willowmoore Park in Benoni all host limited-overs internationals and a full domestic programme, and each is the home of a provincial union in the structure set out in our guide to how the game is governed here.

Boland Park deserves a mention on its own account. It is small, it is set in the winelands, and the arrival of the SA20 gave it a month of televised franchise cricket that has done more for the ground's profile than thirty years of domestic fixtures.

Why the venues shaped the cricket

Play a domestic season across these surfaces and you are examined on every skill a bowler can have. Seam at pace on the highveld. Conventional swing in the Cape wind. Late movement in Durban humidity. Reverse and patience at St George's Park. It is not a coincidence that the country's most consistent export is fast bowlers, and the reasons behind that are the subject of our guide to the fast bowling tradition.

For batters the demand is different but no smaller. A technique that works at the Wanderers, where the ball comes on, is not automatically the technique that works at St George's Park, where it does not. The players who scored heavily across all five over long careers are the ones worth studying, and their records are in the player index.

The rest of the coverage is on the South African cricket hub, the early history of these grounds is in our guide to the origins of cricket here, and there is a comparable survey of the venues on the other side of the Indian Ocean in our Australian grounds guide.

Sources and method

Ground histories, first-match dates and match details come from published Test and one-day international records and the grounds' own historical documentation. Descriptions of pitch behaviour reflect the long-run character reported by players, curators and commentators rather than any single season. Altitude is given approximately. Capacities have been omitted deliberately, since they change with redevelopment and temporary seating and a wrong figure is worse than none. This site has no affiliation with any of the grounds or their operating unions.