South Africa will suffer its barest summer of home Test cricket post-isolation

Kagiso Rabada of the Proteas during day 3 of the 1st Test match between South Africa and Pakistan at SuperSport Park on December 28, 2024 in Centurion, South Africa. (Photo by Lee Warren/Gallo Images)

By Keanan Hemmonsbey

31 Mar 2025

Proteas men’s cricket fans will have to settle for five T20Is against West Indies as the only live cricket hosted by the side next summer.

The only time local crowds will see the Proteas men’s cricket team in action at home across next summer will be in a T20I series against West Indies in January and February – which will serve as preparation for the T20 World Cup in February next year.

The Proteas will spend the rest of 2025 on the road. After the World Test Championship final at Lord’s in June, they travel to Zimbabwe, back to England, then Australia before taking on Pakistan and India – on the subcontinent – towards the end of the year.

The tours to England and Australia are white-ball only, while they’ll take on Pakistan and India in all-format tours.

It’s one of South Africa’s barest summers in years, with even the Covid-19 affected years, with no crowds, seeing more action, including a three-match home Test series against India. It is the first time in the post-isolation era that South Africa have hosted no Test matches across a summer.

The last time South Africa didn’t host what has become the traditional Boxing Day and New Year’s Test matches was in 2022/23 when the team were touring Australia and played those Tests there. But even then, South Africa saw Test action with West Indies coming down in February and March 2023.

The reason for this is the Future Tours Programme (FTP) – a four-year set of bilateral fixtures – laid out by the International Cricket Council (ICC) and which each country adheres to.

The cricket boards of countries then negotiate on the exact dates, length and format of the fixtures and venues, although the hosting country is determined by the ICC with the aim of each country playing each other at least once home and away over 10 years.

The World Test Championship fixtures are also arranged around the FTP by the ICC, but the length of the Test series is largely determined by the host nation.

proteas summer test CEO of Cricket South Africa Pholetsi Moseki. (Photo: Sydney Seshibedi / Gallo Images)

Congested schedules

Cricketing boards are also allowed to negotiate fixtures outside of the FTP to supplement what’s already proposed, which Cricket South Africa (CSA) tried to do.

But with England and Australia contesting the Ashes at the end of the year and India touring New Zealand at the conclusion of South Africa’s tour of India, there were only a few Test nations left to negotiate with.

Zimbabwe, Ireland and Bangladesh are the only countries with a clear schedule around that period but none of those incoming tours is financially viable for CSA, which would expect to make a loss hosting any of those three sides.

“There were no teams available and the Proteas are in India,” CSA CEO Pholetsi Moseki told Daily Maverick. “They come back, I think, just before Christmas.

“So, the (ICC) match-up basically had us in India as well, but there was an effort to schedule something for Boxing Day and New Year, but unfortunately the unavailability of other teams also made it a challenge.

“But there was definitely an effort to see if we could squeeze in something during that period.”

Instead, the SA20 has been brought forward by a month and will start on Boxing Day.

South Africa’s fixtures are reversed next year as they host Australia, Bangladesh and England.

The tradition of Test matches over summer, particularly Boxing Day and New Year’s, is something CSA is eager to uphold despite the absence of matches next summer, according to Moseki.

“Next year we made sure that England will be playing our Boxing Day and New Year’s Tests and England is coming for three Tests,” he said.

“It is definitely something that we will always look to uphold. Hopefully in the next cycle we won’t have a similar situation.

“It’s only in the current cycle where we didn’t have anything [across the summer]. In the previous cycle we also didn't have Boxing Day and New Years Test, it was scheduled in Australia, but it is definitely something that we always look to avoid.

Kagiso Rabada on day three of the first Test match between South Africa and Pakistan in Centurion on 28 December 2024. (Photo: Lee Warren / Gallo Images)

New pitches

CSA has also decided to use the period of sporadic international men’s cricket – the Proteas Women will host Ireland and Pakistan across the summer – to re-lay some of the squares across the country to freshen them up for the 2027 Cricket World Cup to be hosted by South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

The Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg has already begun relaying their square “but it’s happening on the side”, Moseki said.

“It’s not necessarily the relaying of pitches that made us not have content, no. We’re just taking advantage because we couldn’t have any local content.”

Stadium lights are also going to be upgraded for the 50-over tournament which will include day/night matches.

“It’s giving us an opportunity to do something that we were always going to struggle to do but at least now we are doing that,” the CSA CEO said. “But that’s not the reason for not having content.

Six of the eight cricket stadiums that will be hosting World Cup matches are going to use drop-in wickets, like the one the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York had at the T20 World Cup last year. On that occasion, the wickets – which were grown and flown in from Australia – were deemed “unsatisfactory” by the ICC.

Moseki, however, assured that this time it would be “not as crazy as those were” because the wickets will be grown locally and have more than a year of cricket played on them before the Cricket World Cup gets under way, unlike in New York where the first match was played in the month of the T20 World Cup.

The other stadiums would have their pitches relayed “the old-fashioned way”.

“The project is supposed to be finished a year before the World Cup to give them enough time to be played in.” DM

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Congested schedules

New pitches