South Africa v Australia: Cricket's Hardest Rivalry

The Ashes has the older history and the better literature. This fixture has the harder cricket. South Africa against Australia has produced one of the highest-scoring one-day internationals ever played, three consecutive away Test series wins that nobody predicted, a World Cup semi-final that finished level and eliminated the side that did not lose, and the most serious on-field disciplinary affair of the modern era. It has almost never produced a dull series.

The reason is not mysterious. Both countries built their cricket on fast bowling and a certain kind of hardness, both have historically had something to prove to the other, and neither has ever gone into a series against the other with anything held back.

Before isolation

They first met in 1902-03, when an Australian side stopped in South Africa on the way home from an Ashes tour. Australia won comfortably and kept winning for the next half-century. The early record is lopsided enough that the fixture had no real claim to being a rivalry at all.

The turn came in 1952-53. A young South African side under Jack Cheetham toured Australia with almost no expectations attached to it, and drew the series two matches each against a team that had been dominant for years. It is still regarded as one of the great upsets, and it was built on a fielding standard that was well ahead of its time.

By the 1960s the balance had shifted properly. South Africa won at home in 1966-67, their first series victory over Australia. Then came 1969-70, when a side containing Graeme Pollock, Barry Richards, Eddie Barlow and Mike Procter beat Australia four Tests to nil at home. Pollock made 274 at Kingsmead in that series with Richards making 140 in the same innings, and by any reasonable assessment that South African team was the best in the world.

They never played again. South Africa were excluded from international cricket that year and did not return for two decades, which means the strongest team the country has produced has almost no international record to show for itself. The full account of those years is in our history of South African cricket, and the earlier chapter in the origins of the game here.

The 1994 return

The fixture resumed in the 1993-94 season with a Test series in Australia followed almost immediately by a return series at home.

The Sydney Test in January 1994 is the one that mattered. South Africa were bowled out cheaply in the second innings and left Australia needing 117 to win, which at the SCG against a side of that quality was a formality. Fanie de Villiers took six for 43. Australia were bowled out for 111 and lost by five runs. It was the first properly memorable passage of cricket between the two sides in twenty-four years and it told Australia immediately that the returning side was not going to be a soft fixture.

The series finished level, and the return leg in South Africa a few weeks later also finished one apiece, with South Africa winning at the Wanderers. The two teams had played six Tests in three months and separated by nothing at all.

438

12 March 2006, the Wanderers, the fifth and deciding one-day international.

Australia batted first and made 434 for four, with Ricky Ponting making 164. No side had made 400 in a one-day international before. The Australians came off the field believing the game was over, and by every precedent available it was.

South Africa made 438 for nine, off the second-last ball. Herschelle Gibbs made 175 from 111 deliveries, Graeme Smith launched the chase at better than a run a ball before he was out, and the tail got it done with one wicket standing. Nearly nine hundred runs were scored in a single day of cricket at a ground where the thin highveld air makes exactly that possible, a phenomenon covered in our guide to the grounds.

Twenty years on it is still the match both sets of supporters bring up first, and it remains the reference point for what a chase can be.

Three series wins in Australia

The most underrated part of the rivalry is what South Africa did in Australia between 2008 and 2017, which was to win three consecutive Test series there. No other visiting side in the modern era has managed anything close.

2008-09

South Africa won two-one. The Perth Test produced a fourth-innings chase of over four hundred, with AB de Villiers unbeaten at the end of it, and JP Duminy then made a large hundred at the MCG batting at number seven. Australia won the dead rubber at Sydney, where Smith came out to bat at number eleven with a broken hand and a broken finger to try to save the match, and very nearly did.

2012-13

South Africa won one-nil. The defining innings was Faf du Plessis making an unbeaten hundred on Test debut at Adelaide, batting most of two days to save a match that Australia had controlled from the first session. South Africa then won at Perth to take the series.

2016-17

South Africa won two-one. Australia were bowled out for 85 at Hobart in a passage of seam bowling that triggered a full selection upheaval in Australian cricket.

Three tours, three series, three different South African sides. Australia's home record against everybody else across that period was excellent, which is what makes it stand out.

The 2018 series

Australia toured South Africa in early 2018 for four Tests. South Africa won the series three-one, and almost nothing about it is remembered for the cricket.

The first Test at Durban ended with an altercation between David Warner and Quinton de Kock in a stairwell during a break in play, for which both players were sanctioned under the code of conduct. At Port Elizabeth, Kagiso Rabada made shoulder contact with Steve Smith after dismissing him and was initially suspended; the charge was downgraded on appeal and he played the rest of the series.

Newlands, and the third day

The third Test at Newlands is the one that changed things. On the third day, television cameras showed Cameron Bancroft applying a piece of sandpaper to the ball and then attempting to conceal it. The umpires questioned him during play. That evening, Bancroft and Smith, then Australia's captain, held a press conference at which they acknowledged that a plan had been made to alter the condition of the ball.

The sanctions

Cricket Australia conducted its own investigation and imposed sanctions considerably heavier than the ICC's. Smith and David Warner were suspended from international and domestic cricket for twelve months, Bancroft for nine. Smith was barred from holding a leadership position for a further period, and Warner was barred from leadership positions permanently. The head coach, Darren Lehmann, announced his resignation shortly afterwards, having not been found to have any part in the plan.

Those are the facts as recorded by the disciplinary process and the players' own statements at the time. The affair has been argued over exhaustively since, in both countries and about both countries, and the arguments are not settled. What is not in dispute is what was documented: the object used, the admission made, and the sanctions imposed.

South Africa won the fourth Test at the Wanderers and took the series. It was the last time the two sides met in a full Test series where everybody involved could talk about the cricket without reference to something else.

World Cups and finals

The knockout record between the two is its own strange story.

The 1999 World Cup semi-final at Edgbaston is the most famous one-day international ever played that nobody won. South Africa needed nine from the last over with one wicket in hand, Lance Klusener hit the first two balls for four, and then a run-out off the fourth ball left the match tied. Australia went through because they had finished above South Africa in the Super Six stage. South Africa were eliminated without losing.

Australia also won the 2007 semi-final in St Lucia, where South Africa were bowled out cheaply, and the 2023 semi-final at Eden Gardens by three wickets after a low-scoring, gripping match on a difficult surface. Australia's overall World Cup record is set out in our Australian cricket coverage.

Lord's, 2025

Then Lord's, June 2025, and the World Test Championship final. South Africa chased down a target on the fourth day with Aiden Markram making 136, and won by five wickets. It was the country's first men's global title in any format, and it came against Australia, which is either a coincidence or exactly the point.

The record, in matches that mattered

Match	Year	Venue	Result
Fourth Test	1969-70	Port Elizabeth	South Africa complete a 4-0 home series win
Second Test	1994	Sydney	South Africa win by five runs; de Villiers takes 6/43
World Cup semi-final	1999	Edgbaston	Tied; Australia advance on standings
Fifth ODI	2006	The Wanderers	South Africa chase 435 and win by one wicket
Second Test	2008-09	Perth	South Africa chase over 400 in the fourth innings
First Test	2012-13	Adelaide	Du Plessis bats out day five on debut for a draw
Third Test	2018	Newlands	Ball-tampering incident; South Africa win the series 3-1
World Cup semi-final	2023	Eden Gardens	Australia win by three wickets
WTC final	2025	Lord's	South Africa win by five wickets

Over the whole history Australia lead: more Tests played, more Tests won, more series won. The margin is real and it is mostly built in the first fifty years of the fixture, before South Africa were competitive. Since readmission the record is much closer, and in Australia specifically it favours the visitors in a way that no other away record does.

Why these two

Part of it is fast bowling. Both countries produce quicks in quantity, and a series between them is nearly always decided by which attack holds up longer. The traditions on both sides are documented in our guides to South African fast bowling and Australia's greatest fast bowlers.

Part of it is temperament. Neither side has ever been comfortable playing the fixture quietly. The verbal side of the contest has been a feature since 1994, occasionally to the point where administrators have had to intervene, and both teams have a self-image that involves not backing down.

And part of it is that the two countries keep meeting at the moments that decide things. Australia's record in knockout cricket against South Africa is the single heaviest weight the South African side has carried, and the run of away Test series wins is the strongest counterargument it has. The relationship is not the affectionate antagonism of the Ashes. It is something more edged than that, and the cricket is usually better for it.

Career records for the players named here are in the player index, the rest of our coverage sits on the South African cricket hub and the Australian hub, the domestic systems behind both sides are compared in our guides to the structure here and the SA20, and there is a cricket quiz if you want to test how much of the above you already knew.

Sources and method

Match details, series results and scorecards come from published Test and one-day international records. The account of the 2018 series draws on the ICC and Cricket Australia disciplinary findings, the players' own public statements and contemporaneous reporting, and is confined to what those records establish. Head-to-head standing is described in general terms because the totals move with every series; readers wanting exact figures should consult a maintained statistical archive. This site has no affiliation with Cricket South Africa, Cricket Australia or the ICC.