The Match That Time Forgot: Cricket's 12-Day Marathon

In an era where Test matches are neatly packaged into five days, it seems almost unbelievable that a cricket match could last for 12 days. Yet in March 1939, England and South Africa played what would become known as "The Timeless Test" – a match that only ended because the English team had to catch their ship home.

The setting was Durban, South Africa, in what was the fifth and deciding Test of the series. Unlike modern Tests, this match had no predetermined end date – it would be played until there was a result. What followed was a cricket marathon that would test the limits of both players and spectators.

England won the toss and batted first, scoring a solid 530 runs. South Africa responded with 481. Already, five days had passed – the length of a modern Test match – but this was just the beginning. England's second innings produced 654 runs, setting South Africa a daunting target of 696 to win.

What happened next was extraordinary. The South African team, led by Alan Melville, started their chase steadily. By the tenth day, they had reached 479 for 4, needing just 217 more runs for victory. Victory was within reach, but then Mother Nature intervened. Rain had already interrupted play several times during the match, but now it became persistent.

On the twelfth day, with South Africa at 654 for 5 and requiring just 42 more runs for what would have been a world-record chase, the English team had to make a difficult decision. Their ship back to England was departing, and they couldn't afford to miss it with World War II looming on the horizon. The match was declared a draw, and cricket's longest game came to an anticlimactic end.

The statistics from the match are staggering: 1,981 runs were scored, 5,447 balls were bowled, and the actual playing time was 43 hours and 16 minutes. The match spanned twelve days from March 3-14, with five days lost to rain. England's Bill Edrich spent over 11 hours at the crease scoring 219 runs, yet his marathon innings is often forgotten in the context of the marathon match.

The Timeless Test led to significant changes in cricket. The impracticality of such lengthy matches became evident, and the five-day format was standardized for all Test matches after World War II. Today, with even five-day Tests being questioned in favour of shorter formats, the 12-day Durban Test stands as a reminder of a different era in cricket – when time was truly no obstacle to the game.

Ironically, after all that cricket, neither team could claim victory. Perhaps it's fitting that cricket's longest game ended in a draw, leaving us with one of the sport's most fascinating "what if" stories. Would South Africa have completed the highest successful chase in Test history? We'll never know, but the legend of the Timeless Test lives on, a testament to cricket's capacity for endless drama.