War of CricketCricket in the 20th Century
Cricket's 20th century opened with the Edwardian "Golden Age" of Grace, Trumper and Ranjitsinhji, was twice halted by world war, convulsed by England's Bodyline tactics of 1932-33, reshaped by South Africa's 21-year exile over apartheid, and closed with one-day cricket established as a permanent third format alongside Tests and first-class cricket.
The Golden Age and two world wars
The years either side of 1900 are remembered as cricket's Golden Age, when W. G. Grace's long career was ending just as batsmen like Victor Trumper and Ranjitsinhji were redefining what the game could look like. That momentum was interrupted twice: international and first-class cricket in England and Australia effectively stopped for the duration of both the First World War (1914-1918) and the Second World War (1939-1945), each conflict costing the sport a generation of players who never returned to it, or returned changed.
Bodyline, 1932-33
The single most notorious controversy of the interwar years was Bodyline: a tactic devised by England captain Douglas Jardine and delivered by fast bowler Harold Larwood on the 1932-33 Ashes tour, aimed at bowling short and at the batsman's body to combat the otherwise unstoppable Don Bradman. With no helmets or protective gear in use, the tactic was widely condemned as dangerous and unsportsmanlike; it provoked a diplomatic incident between Australia and England before tempers cooled, and it eventually forced changes to the Laws restricting how many fielders could be stationed on the leg side for short-pitched bowling.
Bradman, and the postwar years
Don Bradman's Test career, spanning 1928 to 1948, produced a batting average of 99.94 — still regarded as the single greatest statistical achievement in any major sport. English cricket had its own postwar high point in the "Summer of Compton and Edrich" in 1947, when Denis Compton and Bill Edrich both scored prolifically for Middlesex and England. The following years produced some of the sport's most celebrated pairings and characters: Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller as Australia's postwar new-ball attack, Alec Bedser as England's, and Ted Dexter as an attacking England captain through the early 1960s.
The D'Oliveira affair and South Africa's isolation
In 1968, England's selectors initially left Cape-Coloured all-rounder Basil D'Oliveira out of the touring party for that winter's tour of apartheid South Africa, widely seen as a decision made to avoid provoking the South African government. When D'Oliveira was later called up as an injury replacement, South Africa refused to host a team including him and the tour was cancelled. The affair accelerated a moratorium the ICC imposed on tours to South Africa from 1970, excluding the country from international cricket at a point when its Test side — with players such as Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock and Mike Procter — was arguably the strongest in the world. South Africa did not play international cricket again until it was readmitted in 1991, a 21-year exile.
The birth of one-day cricket
The first One Day International was an accident of the weather: when the first three days of the third Test between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground were washed out in January 1971, officials abandoned the match and played a single 40-over-a-side game instead, on 5 January 1971. Australia won by five wickets, and the format that grew from that improvisation — first the 1975 Cricket World Cup, won by West Indies, then a settled 50-over standard by the mid-1990s — became cricket's second major format of the century. Its look and feel, from coloured kits to floodlit night matches, were shaped soon afterward by Kerry Packer's breakaway World Series Cricket of 1977-79, covered in full on this site's World Series Cricket page.
| Year(s) | Event |
|---|---|
| 1914-1918 / 1939-1945 | International cricket suspended for both world wars |
| 1932-33 | The Bodyline Ashes series |
| 1968 | The D'Oliveira affair; England's 1968-69 tour of South Africa cancelled |
| 1970-1991 | South Africa excluded from international cricket over apartheid |
| 5 January 1971 | First One Day International, Australia v England, MCG |
| 1975 | First Cricket World Cup, won by West Indies |
| 1977-1979 | World Series Cricket |
By the century's end, cricket had a settled three-format structure, a global governing body in the ICC, and a commercial model — pioneered by Packer and absorbed into the official game — that every subsequent boom, including the one detailed on this site's Cricket in the 21st Century page, was built on.