Originally published in 2014

South Africa’s relationship with Lord’s has remained extraordinary by any standards in the two decades since its 1994 return. Both good and bad, but mostly good. Very good.

In 1997 South Africa’s poster-boy, Jonty Rhodes, rescued the team from 46-4 on the first morning, and Allan Donald joined him on the honours board as England were thrashed by 10 wickets. Six years later, South African cricket had been turned upside down and inside out by the demise of Hansie Cronje and the dismal failure of the team at the World Cup on home soil. But the future was represented by a 22-year-old captain and the first black South African to make himself a fixture in the national team – and boy, did they deliver. Graeme Smith’s 259 set up a record total of 682-6, and the image of Makhaya Ntini spontaneously kissing the pitch after claiming his 10th wicket became instantly iconic.

Five years further on, in 2008, so concerned was coach Mickey Arthur about the “Lord’s effect” on some of his key but young and inexperienced players that he arranged an unscheduled “tourist day” three days before the Test and instructed them to take photographs and “do all the history stuff”. It didn’t work. Overawed, Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel bowled with stars in their eyes and England piled up 593-8 with 150-plus for Ian Bell and Smith’s bête noire, Kevin Pietersen. But Smith, Neil McKenzie and Hashim Amla joined Ashwell Prince on the Honours Board in the follow-on innings and the match was saved. It was the only post-isolation Test match South Africa didn’t win, but it felt as good as one to the players.

Illlingworth announced that his captain was being fined £2,000 – and then rubbed salt into the wounds by clarifying that only half of that was for the actual offence. The other half was for lying to the match referee. There was little else Illingworth could have done to humiliate his captain and leave him to fend for himself. Everyone, it seemed, was waiting for Atherton to resign. But he was made of sterner stuff. He refused to go.

Atherton did, however, flee to the Lake District to escape the media frenzy straight after the Test and tried to maintain as low a profile as possible. It didn’t work. The press – including the dreaded paparazzi – were all over him. A week after South Africa’s remarkable victory, the Atherton scandal was still all the papers were interested in.

Interestingly, when Sachin Tendulkar was collared for a similar “ball-fiddling” indiscretion against South Africa at Centurion less than a decade later, and hit with a ban, it was the match referee Mike Denness who was struck with the players’ and public’s wrath. In just eight years the game had moved so far “forward” that ball-tampering was regarded as a “necessary evil”. A year or two later it was being treated as an “art form”. Back in 1994, however, it came very close to wiping all but the very last drops of credit and appreciation away from the Test match that was so fundamental to South Africa’s confirmation as being officially “welcomed back” by the rest of the world.