Several games in the 2025 Women’s World Cup have been marred by rain, but the tournament has still had better luck with weather than the 1912 Triangular Test Championship.
England, Australia, and South Africa were the only members when the ICC was founded at Lord’s in the summer of 1909. Several aspects of the future of cricket were decided at that inaugural meeting. They included the first ever FTP, spanning two cycles – 1909 to 1913, and 1913 to 1917.
Each of the three teams was scheduled to tour every other team over the course of this cycle. If that sounds too meagre, it is worth remembering that tours used to be long (often up to six months), and travel used to be by ship.
Additionally, two triangular Test Championships were planned in England in 1912 and 1916. These would be played out in a triple round-robin league format (every team would play every other team thrice) – in other words, nine Tests without a final. Rival boards would share revenue for every Test match.
Since there were only three teams, this was technically the first ever World Cup in the history of cricket.
It seemed a brilliant idea, at least on paper. That it did not work out had three major reasons.
Below-par teams
For the first edition in 1912, none of the three teams was at full strength. Following a heated argument with the board members, six Australian stars – captain Clem Hill, Victor Trumper, Warwick Armstrong, Hanson Carter, “Tibby” Cotter, and Vernon Ransford – opted out of the tour. Hill’s argument culminated in an actual physical fight with board member Peter McAlister, but that is another story.
South Africa had taken down England in the previous decade at home, but on this tour they arrived without captain Percy Sherwell and googly bowler Bert Vogler. Several of them struggled on this tour, as the matting wickets back home had not prepared them for the turf wickets in a wet English summer.
England themselves were led by 40-year-old CB Fry. A man of unusual idiosyncrasies, he met the national selectors only once over the course of this very long summer.
No takers for neutral games
The idea of two below-strength neutral teams playing – there were three Australia-South Africa Tests – did not impress the English fans. “Nine Tests provide a surfeit of cricket,” summed up The Telegraph, “and contests between Australia and South Africa are not a great attraction to the British public.”
The organisers had anticipated this. Of the neutral Tests, Old Trafford hosted one on Whit Monday and Trent Bridge on the August Bank Holiday; and at Lord’s, George V became the first reigning monarch to watch Test cricket.
There was a historical moment as well. Jimmy Matthews of Australia became the first to take two hat-tricks in the same Test, against South Africa in the tournament opener at Old Trafford.
But none of this lured the fans. The neutral Tests gained little revenue.
And then came the rain
Despite everything, the Test Championship might have worked, but the weather spelt doom. The summer of 1912 was the wettest in England since records began to be kept, in 1766.
Worse, the rain almost specifically hit the marquee England-Australia games (the three-match mini-series was also played for the Ashes) especially hard. The Lord’s Test, played on a surface that Fry described as “pure mud”, did not even reach the third innings. At Old Trafford, only 13 overs could be bowled in the second innings of the Test.
South Africa were luckier with the weather, but they hardly put up a fight. They lost five of their Tests by colossal margins – two by an innings, two by 10 wickets, one by 174 runs. The other was a rain-affected draw.
The tournament turned out to be a drag by the time it reached the climax, at The Oval. Of the eight Tests until that point, three had been hit by rain and five had resulted in one-sided thrashings of South Africa. “Who cares?” asked the Daily Mirror in an article titled ‘Doesn’t Matter Cricket Season’.
Yet, there was something to play for: England had won three Tests and Australia two of their five, so the tournament was still ‘live’. The authorities tried to make the most of this ‘final’. They announced that the Test would be played “to a finish even if it takes a week”. They even announced a tie-breaking Test if Australia won.
But – as you might have guessed by now – the rain came again. Things looked headed for a contest after England made 245 and Australia 90-2, but by then the pitch had reduced to a state “better suited to water polo”. Australia collapsed for 111. And once England set them 310, Australia sank without a trace: they folded for 65 in 22.4 overs.
The Punch concluded the affair with a cartoon of three umbrella-covered cricketers (one for each team) amidst the downpour. ‘The Triangular Farce’ ran the caption, with the words “When shall we there meet again/In thunder, lightning or in rain?” underneath.
The tournament yielded £12,463 4s. 2d (about £1.8m in 2025). After the expenses were paid for, the Australians received £2,986 (£436,000 today), the South Africans £1,878 10s. (£274,000), and the MCC £4,465 16s. 2d (£681,000).
In his Wisden Almanack editorial, Sydney Pardon was sympathetic towards the organisers: ‘The Fates fought against the Triangular Tournament. Such a combination of adverse conditions could hardly have been imagined.”
Had it not been for the First World War, would the planned sequel have gone ahead four years later? One can only speculate.
