Oval Diary

This is not the first time that both captains in a Test match were born in the same country, in this case, Graeme Smith and Kevin Pietersen in South Africa. That was in 1887, when Arthur Shrewsbury and Percy "Greatheart" McDonnell led England and Australia respectively at Sydney. Both were born in England, although McDonnell emigrated when he was six. Nor is it the first match involving these two sides when both captains were born in the same country. That was in the second Test between them in 1889, in Cape Town, when William Milton and Monty Bowden, both Englishmen, were captains. Bowden, who remains England's youngest captain, never came back to England and eventually made his way to what was then Rhodesia, where he died in a wooden hut and was buried in a coffin made of whisky crates. Milton, who became Sir William, also... [read full story]