Gauteng men's cricket team

The Gauteng (formerly Transvaal) men's cricket team, based in Johannesburg, has been active since 1890. The team has first-class status, and competes in South Africa's national championship, currently known as the CSA 4-Day Series. Their home ground until March 1946 was the Old Wanderers Stadium. When that closed to be rebuilt as a railway station, Transvaal relocated to Ellis Park, the city's rugby union venue. They played there from December 1946 until February 1956. Since December 1956, the team's usual home ground has been the (New) Wanderers Stadium.

Area
From its foundation in 1890, the team represented the whole of Transvaal, north of the Vaal River. In December 1937, the Northerns team was created to represent Northern and North Eastern Transvaal (now Limpopo), the area north of Johannesburg. Transvaal's catchment was further reduced in 1991 with the creation of the Easterns and North West teams to represent Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga) and Western Transvaal (now North West Province) respectively. This meant that the Transvaal team had become representative of what is now Gauteng, the southern part of Transvaal, and it became the Gauteng team in November 1997.

Championships
In the "provincial era" of the South African championship, from 1889–90 to 2003–04, Transvaal won the title a record 25 times (once as Gauteng), including seven between 1978–79 and 1987–88 inclusive. When the "franchise era" began, Gauteng merged with North West to form the Lions team, which won the championship three times. After the franchises were terminated by Cricket South Africa (CSA) in 2021, Gauteng retained the Lions brand (North West became the Dragons).

As the Lions, Gauteng topped the Division One table in both 2023–24 and 2024–25. They won the title in 2024, defeating Western Province by 99 runs. The 2025 final against Northerns ended in a draw, so that title was shared.

References

Category:CSA 4-Day Series teams
Category:1890 establishments in South Africa