South Africa v England: The D'Oliveira Trophy

The trophy South Africa and England play for is named after a man South Africa refused to select. Basil D'Oliveira left the country because it would not pick him, made himself an England cricketer, and in 1968 became the reason a tour of South Africa was cancelled and the reason the country's expulsion from international cricket accelerated. Since 2004-05 the two sides have contested a trophy in his name.

That is an unusually honest piece of naming. Most bilateral trophies commemorate an achievement. This one commemorates an exclusion, and it does so in a fixture where England hold a considerable historical lead and South Africa have won a small number of series that mattered enormously.

This page looks at the fixture from the South African end: what the record actually says, which matches South Africans cite, and why the series sits where it does in the home calendar.

The trophy and its short history

The Basil D'Oliveira Trophy was first contested in the 2004-05 series in South Africa. It goes to the winner of a Test series between the two countries, and it stays with the holder if a series is drawn — a convention that has mattered more than once.

England have held it for most of its existence. South Africa's wins came in England in 2008 and again in England in 2012. The 2009-10 series in South Africa was drawn. England took the 2004-05 series in South Africa, the 2015-16 series in South Africa, the 2017 home series, the 2019-20 series in South Africa and the 2022 home series.

Read the other way, that sequence contains a specific fact South Africans notice: both of the country's trophy-era series wins were achieved away from home, and its last series win over England of any kind was more than a decade ago.

The holder-keeps-it rule for a drawn series is not a detail. It means a side can hold the trophy for years without winning it again, and it puts a particular kind of pressure on the last Test of a level series — usually the New Year's Test in Cape Town, in front of the largest crowd of the tour. That is a better piece of tournament design than most bilateral trophies manage, and it was arrived at by convention rather than by anyone planning it.

The ledger, and the enormous draw column

The fixture began in 1889 and is one of the oldest in the game. Across more than 150 Tests, England have won around sixty-six and South Africa around thirty-five, with something in the region of fifty-five draws.

The draw column is the interesting part. It is disproportionately large for a modern rivalry, and there are two reasons.

The first is the format history. A great deal of early England–South Africa cricket was played over three days, which in an era of low scoring rates produced a high proportion of unfinished matches. Some series in South Africa were played to a finish, and one of those produced the longest Test ever played, but the general pattern for decades was matches too short for a result.

The second is that South Africa's isolation removed the country from Test cricket entirely for twenty-one years, so the sample of matches from the modern, result-heavy era is much smaller than the raw total suggests. The record therefore describes two eras stitched together with a gap in the middle, and it flatters neither side accurately. The reasons for that gap are set out in the guide to South African cricket's isolation and readmission.

There is a third distortion worth naming, and it applies to the pre-isolation portion of the ledger. For most of the period before 1970 South Africa played only England, Australia and New Zealand, and England far more often than either of the others. A large share of the country's entire Test history to that point consists of this one fixture, which means the England record is not one line in South Africa's ledger — for several decades it very nearly was the ledger.

Lord's, July 2003

The match South Africans reach for first is the second Test of the 2003 tour of England, and it is unusual in producing two national landmarks at once.

Graeme Smith, in his first series as captain and on his first tour of England, made 259 — still the highest Test score by a visiting batter at Lord's. Makhaya Ntini then took five wickets in each innings for match figures of ten for 220, becoming the first South African bowler to take ten in a Test at Lord's and getting his name on the honours board twice in the same week. South Africa won by an innings and 92 runs.

Two things make that result carry more than its scoreline. Smith had inherited a side coming out of the Hansie Cronje aftermath and a failed home World Cup, and this was the fortnight he established that he could lead it. And Ntini's ten-wicket haul came from a bowler who had been the first black African to play a Test for his country, at the ground that functions as the sport's headquarters. The significance of that is dealt with more fully in the guide to South Africa's black cricket pioneers.

The 2012 tour, and the mace

The other series South Africans cite is the 2012 tour of England, and this one was explicitly played for the top ranking.

England were the number one Test side. South Africa won the first Test at The Oval, where Hashim Amla made 311 not out — the only Test triple century by a South African — and Jacques Kallis went unbeaten on the way to a stand of 377 for the third wicket. The second Test produced no result. South Africa won the third, at Lord's, and took the ICC mace as the top-ranked Test team.

It is the highest point of the rivalry from the South African side, because it was won in England against a full-strength England side that had itself just reached the top of the rankings. Amla's playing record is discussed further in the guide to South Africa's greatest Test batters.

Why England's tours land at Christmas

The English visit occupies a specific slot in the South African summer, and it is the most commercially significant slot the country has.

The pattern is a Test starting in mid-December, the Boxing Day Test at SuperSport Park in Centurion, and the New Year's Test at Newlands in Cape Town. That sequence exists because it aligns with the English holiday period, which brings travelling support in numbers no other touring side generates, and because Cape Town in early January is the single best week the South African tourist calendar has.

England's 2026-27 tour follows exactly that shape. The three Tests are scheduled for the Wanderers in Johannesburg from 17 December, Centurion from Boxing Day, and Newlands from 3 January, with a one-day series afterwards at Paarl and Bloemfontein. A Twenty20 leg originally pencilled in was removed from the schedule over calendar conflicts, with both boards saying they would look at rescheduling. The full itinerary is set out in the guide to the England tour of South Africa in 2026-27.

Slot	Venue	What defines it
Mid-December Test	Often the Wanderers	Hard, fast, bouncy; the ground most likely to produce a three-day Test
Boxing Day Test	SuperSport Park, Centurion	High altitude, seam movement in the morning, afternoon thunderstorms
New Year's Test	Newlands, Cape Town	The largest travelling English crowd of any tour anywhere

Newlands, January 2016: 1,256 runs and no result

The strangest match in the modern rivalry was the New Year's Test of the 2015-16 series, and it is worth describing in detail because nothing about it went the way a Cape Town Test is supposed to.

England batted first and declared on 629 for six. Ben Stokes made 258 from 198 balls, reaching his double century in 163 balls — at the time the second-fastest in Test history and the quickest by an Englishman — and shared a stand of 399 with Jonny Bairstow, who made 150 not out for his first Test century. That partnership was a world record for the sixth wicket.

South Africa then declared on 627 for seven. Hashim Amla made 201, his fourth Test double century, batting for the best part of two days. Temba Bavuma made 102 not out at the other end for the first Test century by a black African for South Africa, which is the innings from that match South Africans remember.

The Test was drawn, with thirteen wickets falling across five days for more than twelve hundred runs. England won the series anyway, two-one, which is the pattern of the past decade in miniature: South Africa produce the individual innings and England produce the series result.

The women's fixture, and the six runs at Newlands

The rivalry's most consequential recent result did not involve the men's teams at all.

In the semi-final of the 2023 Women's T20 World Cup, played at Newlands, South Africa beat England by six runs. South Africa made 164 for four, with Tazmin Brits making 68 and Laura Wolvaardt 53. England were 132 for three and comfortable, then lost five wickets for twenty-six runs. Ayabonga Khaka finished with four for 29, and Shabnim Ismail bowled the England captain Heather Knight in the final over with thirteen still needed.

It put South Africa into a World Cup final for the first time — the first South African side of either gender to reach a final in any format of the game. The tournament was at home, the semi-final was at Newlands, and the opponent was England. For a country whose men's teams have a long history of losing knockout matches, beating England in a home semi-final was a specific kind of relief.

The bowling, which is what the series is usually decided by

Batting collapses get the headlines in this fixture, but the pattern across the modern era is that whichever side has the better seam attack in the conditions wins.

South Africa's strongest hands were the Shaun Pollock and Ntini pairing of the early 2000s and then the Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel attack of the 2010s, which is as good a three-man seam unit as any country has fielded. Steyn's record against England is the reason English batters of that generation describe touring South Africa as the hardest assignment available.

England's answer was James Anderson and Stuart Broad, whose careers overlapped almost exactly with that South African attack and who had the advantage of the Dukes ball and English cloud cover for half the contests. The 2015-16, 2019-20 and 2022 series all turned substantially on which attack held up, and in each case England's did.

The one recent exception is instructive. In 2022 South Africa won the opening Test at Lord's, bowling England out cheaply twice, and then lost both remaining matches. It was a series decided by whether a seam attack could repeat itself in different conditions, and South Africa's could not.

Where the fixture stands

South Africa arrive at the next instalment as World Test Championship holders, having beaten Australia at Lord's in June 2025 for the country's first men's global title since 1998. England arrive having won the last four completed series between the two sides.

Those two facts sit awkwardly together, and that is the honest state of the rivalry. South Africa are the reigning Test champions with a poor recent record against this specific opponent. England have the better ledger and no current claim to being the better side.

What has not changed in more than a century is the shape of the contest: fast bowling on quick surfaces, a batting order that has to survive the first hour, and a fixture that has always carried more history than either board is comfortable discussing. The rest of the South African game sits on the cricket in South Africa hub.

One last thing distinguishes this rivalry from South Africa's contests with Australia or India. In those, the argument is about cricket. In this one, the argument keeps returning to selection, eligibility and who is permitted to represent whom — because that is what the 1968 affair was about, because a long line of South African-born cricketers have subsequently played for England, and because the trophy on the table is named for the first man to make that journey and change history by doing it. No amount of good cricket has retired that subject, and there is no particular reason to expect it to.

Sources and method

This page draws on official Test match records and series results for the fixture, on the published history of the Basil D'Oliveira Trophy and its first contest in 2004-05, on Lord's honours board records for the 2003 Test, on ICC ranking records for the 2012 series, and on the fixture list published by Cricket South Africa and the England and Wales Cricket Board for the 2026-27 tour. Head-to-head totals move with every match played and are given as approximate figures rather than fixed counts. Scheduling details for future tours are as announced and remain subject to change. Nothing here is computed from our own datasets.