Ghost Games
Matches that barely exist in the record.
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1912
Nobody had decided how to win it
Nine Tests between three countries were played in 1912. Wisden records that no method of deciding the winner had been agreed before it started.
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1970
The caps that were taken back
Five matches in 1970 were Test matches for two years and then stopped being them. Geoff Boycott’s 157 and Peter Lever’s seven wickets went with them.
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2005
Eight thousand two hundred and fifty-nine
The ICC gave Test status to a match between Australia and a World XI. On the fourth day, 8,259 people came.
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2009
Ten balls
A Test at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium was abandoned after ten deliveries because the outfield was sand. It has a Test number and the statistics count.
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2022
A series that finished the following year
The fifth Test of the 2021 series was played in July 2022, with different captains on both sides, and the series is recorded as drawn.
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1998
Fifty-six minutes at Sabina Park
The first Test of England’s 1998 tour of the West Indies lasted 10.1 overs before the pitch was declared unfit. It has a number, a result and career statistics, and the card describes the abandonment in its own words.
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1946
Forty-two and fifty-four
New Zealand were bowled out for 42 and 54 at Wellington in March 1946, in a match that lasted two days and was not a Test when it was played. It became one two years later, and it is on the card as New Zealand’s first against Australia.
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1971
The Test that nearly stopped
England won the seventh Test at Sydney in February 1971 by 62 runs and took the Ashes. The card carries one note, that Terry Jenner retired hurt after being hit on the head by a short ball from John Snow. What happened in the minutes after, when England left the field without asking, is not on it.
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1975
No play on the fifth day
Australia were 220 for three at Headingley in August 1975, chasing 445, with a day to go and Rick McCosker on 95. The card’s fifth-day line reads No Play, and its note says why: the pitch was cut with knives and covered in oil overnight by people campaigning to get a man out of prison. The match is a draw.