South Africa to Welcome Sri Lanka and Pakistan. | © (forbes)
South Africa will welcome Sri Lanka and Pakistan’s men’s teams, as well as England’s women’s team, for cricket matches during the summer of 2024-25. There will be a total of 17 international games, including five Tests, happening from November to January. The men’s Test matches are part of the World Test Championship and will take place in Durban, Gqeberha, Centurion, and Cape Town. Interestingly, the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg won’t host a Test match for the second consecutive summer.
The Wanderers did not host either of the two Tests against India in the 2023-24 summer and with South Africa not due to host any Tests in the 2025-26 summer, the earliest the venue can hope for a Test fixture is 2026. Insiders told The HD Sports that officials were given “no explanation” for why the venue has been snubbed,
The women’s Test will be played in Bloemfontein, which last hosted a Test seven years ago, when the men played Bangladesh in October 2017. Kingsmead and St George’s Park also last saw Test action against Bangladesh, in the 2021-22 season, and will be the venues for the Sri Lanka series. It was at these same two grounds that Sri Lanka won their first Test series against South Africa in 2019. The Sri Lanka series is red-ball only.
After that, Pakistan will have a full tour scheduled, playing three T20Is and three ODIs. Then, there will be some Test matches during the festive season. The Boxing Day Test will be at SuperSport Park, followed by the New Year’s Test at Newlands, ending on January 7. After these matches, the men’s team won’t have any more home games, as the SA20 tournament will start soon after and last until early February. The exact dates for these events haven’t been confirmed yet, and there might be a clash with an ODI tri-series in Pakistan before the Champions Trophy, which is planned for mid-February.
Women’s team will host England for three T20Is, three ODIs, including the Black Day ODI to raise awareness about gender-based violence, and a Test. They have one fixture in each white-ball format at a premier ground: a T20I in Centurion and an ODI in Durban. The Test will be the first women’s Test played in the country in 22 years, since South Africa played India in Paarl in 2002.
