Centurion Park is a cricket ground in Centurion in South Africa. It is also known as SuperSport Park since television company SuperSport bought shares in the stadium. The capacity of the ground is 22,000.
The Titans cricket team have played most of their home games here since 2004. The ground was home to the Titans’ predecessor team Northerns (previously Northern Transvaal) since 1986. It is also the home ground of the Pretoria Capitals.
The town of Verwoerdburg was renamed Centurion at the end of apartheid, with the politically neutral new name of the town coming from that of the cricket ground.
The first Test match at Centurion was held in November 1995, as the opening match of the first post-apartheid tour of South Africa by the England cricket team; however, the match was drawn after being severely affected by rain.
Centurion was the venue for the notorious fifth Test match of the next England tour in 2000, when (after three days’ play were lost to rain) South African captain Hansie Cronje forfeited his team’s second innings to allow for a result on the final day of the match, which England won. It was later revealed that Cronje had done so after being approached by a bookmaker and offered money to stop the match ending in a draw.
Further controversy occurred in 2001, when the scheduled third Test between South Africa and India at Centurion was declared to be an “unofficial” Test after the Board of Control for Cricket in India refused to accept the International Cricket Council’s match referee, Mike Denness, who had disciplined several Indian players in the previous match at Gqeberha.
In December 2010, India batsman Sachin Tendulkar scored his 50th Test century at Centurion in the first Test of the 2010–11 Indian tour of South Africa.
From the summer of 2018/19, the ground usually hosts a Boxing Day Test.
Cricket records:
- Highest Test Total: 621 – South Africa vs. Sri Lanka, 26 December 2020
- Highest Individual Test Score: 208 – Hashim Amla, South Africa vs. West Indies, 17 December 2014
- Best Test Innings Bowling Figures: 7/29 – Kyle Abbott, South Africa vs. Pakistan, 22 February 2013
- Best Test Match Bowling Figures: 13/144 – Kagiso Rabada, South Africa vs. England, 22 January 2016
Address: SuperSport Park, 283 Corner West Avenue and South Street, Centurion, 0157