In the year 1912, there were only three Test playing nations in the world, South Africa, England and Australia. Hence the Triangular Tournament was held between those nations in the same year to entertain the cricket fans of those times. This tournament was not as successful as it was expected to be and was amongst the only three tournaments in the history of Test cricket to have being played between more than two nations.
This tournament was a nine match tournament where England emerged victorious. The proposal to arrange such a tournament was put forward in 1909 during the pioneer meeting of the Imperial Cricket Council. At that time the proposal was to hold this tournament every four years, starting with England hosting the first one. There were many reasons for which this tournament was deemed as a failure one of which was that the tournament began in the wettest months in England, June to August. The rainfall in these three months was more than double of the annual average rainfall in England. After the rains hampered the enjoyment of the spectators, the August was the wettest, dullest and coldest one of the 20th century.
In those days, it was not conventional to cover the pitches during rains to protect them against damages and the batsman had to endure the oncoming deliveries over a wet and sticky pitch. The tests in those days lasted for three days. In the first two days between Australia and England at the Lord’s, only four hours of play was possible because of unfavorable conditions. The next clash between the two was even worst-hit and critics called the pitch fir to play water-polo.
Australia was also facing a problem between the players and the management with the players not satisfied with the team manager, George Crouch. On the other hand, Crouch claimed that some of the team behaved very badly. As a result, the Australian income from the series was down by 40 percent from their previous tour in 1909. Six of the Australian key players at that time refused to go on tour and were later sacked by the team management. The six players included Victor Trumper and skipper Clem Hill, both of whom never again played for Australian national team.
The English team dominated the tournament because of favorable pitch conditions. The South African bowlers were not used to the grassy English pitches and hence were not as much threatening as they possibly could. Australian bowler, Jimmy Mathews was successful in taking two hat-tricks in a single test match against South Africa. This record has yet never been broken by any other bowler in Test cricket history.
After the grand failure of the tournament in the debut season itself, the tournament was never again repeated. Furthermore, the idea of a competition between more than two nations was also not repeated until one-day match form was introduced in international cricket in 1975. The year marked the beginning of the Cricket World Cup held between competing nations.