The South African cricket team toured England between 29 June and 4 September 2008. They played four Test matches, one Twenty20 International and five One Day Internationals against England. They also played six tour matches against Somerset, Middlesex, Bangladesh A, a PCA Masters XI and two against the England Lions.
It was announced that following the conclusion of this four-match series, future matches between England and South Africa would comprise five Test matches but only three one-day matches after the series was granted 'icon' status. The first game with the new format would be in the 2009–10 season in South Africa. In fact though, the next series was four matches, and the 2012 series three.
Famous quotes containing the words south african, south, african, cricket, team and/or england:
“I don’t have any doubts that there will be a place for progressive white people in this country in the future. I think the paranoia common among white people is very unfounded. I have always organized my life so that I could focus on political work. That’s all I want to do, and that’s all that makes me happy.”
—Hettie V., South African white anti-apartheid activist and feminist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 21, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)
“You can forget what I said about buying the gun. You’re a tenderfoot. Liberty Valance’s the toughest man south of the Picket Wire—next to me.”
—Willis Goldbeck (1900–1979)
“The soldier here, as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward, and by his best foot. They were in the proportion of the soldiers to the laborers in an African ant-hill.... On every prominent ledge you could see England’s hands holding the Canadas, and I judged from the redness of her knuckles that she would soon have to let go.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“They’re two good old friends of mine. I call them Constitution and The Bill of Rights. A most dependable team for long journeys. Then I’ve got another one called Missouri Compromise. And a Supreme Court—a fine, dignified horse, though you have to push him on every now and then.”
—Dan Totheroh (1895–1976)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)