Most competitive Test Rivalry in last 50 years ?

[Sunil1z]

Which 2 Teams according to you have/had fiercest Test rivalry ?

IND- Pak not in option because most of the matches used to end in Draw
Ashes not in option because it is mostly one-sided
Aus-Wi not in option because rivalry is of mainly 10 years (90s) otherwise they are mostly one sided.

 

[Gob]

Eng vs SA actually

 

[TheJediBrah]

Pak/SL is a rivalry?

 

[subshakerz]

India Australia obviously.

 

[Chubb]

I think England-SA has been more competitive over the spans in the poll but India-Aus since around 2014.

 

[Daemon]

SA-Aus pretty good too

 

[Burgey]

How come the title says 50 years but all the listed options are from 1993 onwards?

 

[duffer]

Fiercest rivalry changes the title question imo. In terms of actual competitiveness it's Aus-SA surely? I can't recall any 4-0 butt wipings there

 

[Slifer]

India-Australia currently. Historically, Australia and RSA in the 90s for me was box office. Close series between the two best teams of that era.

 

[Sunil1z]

How come the title says 50 years but all the listed options are from 1993 onwards?

Pak-WI is from 80-00.
You can name any rivalry which I missed.

 

[Sunil1z]

Fiercest rivalry changes the title question imo. In terms of actual competitiveness it's Aus-SA surely? I can't recall any 4-0 butt wipings there

There were 3 consecutive series between 2002-2006 when SA couldn’t win even 1 Test iirc.

 

[Bolo.]

Fiercest rivalry changes the title question imo. In terms of actual competitiveness it's Aus-SA surely? I can't recall any 4-0 butt wipings there

3 test series aren't going to give a lot of 4-0 results .

Aus were dominant in the early 2000s. 2 3-0s. Other than that time, every series has been super competitive.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Ban v Zim was pretty big around the 00s

because no one else would play them they had to play each other all the time

 

[subshakerz]

Australia and India from nineties onwards is the closest, also has the most vested emotional reactions and the box office given that they eventually became the top teams of the era.

India were the main team to truly trounce Australia away from home in the nineties. The clashes between Warne and McGrath with Tendulkar became legendary. India were the first team to dominate Warne.

Waugh called it the final frontier and then you had the epic 2001 series followed by the close 2004 series. Australia beat them at home in 2004/5 and that was their biggest achievement since beating the WI a decade before. The 2007 series in Australia had a lot of juicy controversy.

India stopped Australia twice when they were on record win streaks in tests and in the WC. India fell to Australia in the 2003 final. The 2011 QF was terrific and Australia got revenge in the 2015 semifinal. Kohli as captain added more juice to the contest, and the 2017 series in India and 2018 and 2021 wins in Australia were all memorable.

The two teams at time seemed to genuinely dislike each other which added to the rivalry.

Pak-India and SA-Australia had moments of peak cricket but generally were pretty mellow.

 

[Chubb]

It's certainly telling Waugh decided to retire after the 03-04 India series rather than the 02-03 Ashes.

 

[Sunil1z]

Pak-Ind had 3 consecutive very good Test series (99,04,05) . I don’t know who gave Pak Curators the instructions to prepare absolutely road pitches in 1st 2 Test of 06 and in reply India also prepared 2 road pitches in 07 .

 

[TheJediBrah]

It's certainly telling Waugh decided to retire after the 03-04 India series rather than the 02-03 Ashes.

It's really not tbh

 

[duffer]

It's certainly telling Waugh decided to retire after the 03-04 India series rather than the 02-03 Ashes.

How so?

 

[TheJediBrah]

How so?

He's implying that Waugh retired then because he was waiting for the India series rather than after the Ashes, because the India series was more important to him. Which is not true at all, it's just where he was in his career. He was 38 years old and had been on the decline for a little while

 

[subshakerz]

Pak-Ind had 3 consecutive very good Test series (99,04,05) . I don’t know who gave Pak Curators the instructions to prepare absolutely road pitches in 1st 2 Test of 06 and in reply India also prepared 2 road pitches in 07 .

The three tests in 99 were one of the best series I have seen in terms of cricket quality.

Unfortunately, by 2007, the teams were playing each other too much and the interest wasn't there that much. They should have spaced out the series over a decade.