The Eastern Cape, to where England’s cricketers travelled on Saturday, is the historic home of black cricket in South Africa. It is here where cricket in the black community first took root in the mid-19th century and where it was found to be flowering half a century after that, spread by missionary schools determined to “educate” and “civilise”.
By the time that the first Test was played between England and South Africa in 1889 — here in Port Elizabeth, the oldest Test venue in the world outside England and Australia — cricket among black Africans was flourishing, with regular inter-town competitions, although there were no representatives in South Africa’s Anglophile first Test team, almost half of whom were educated at some of the most famous
