What do you think of this fact?
Most sports run on a clock. In 1939, cricket tried playing without one, and the match simply refused to end.
A game with no time limit
Some Test matches used to be timeless: no time limit, played until one side won. According to Wikipedia, there were 99 of them between 1877 and 1939. The last one began on 3 March 1939 in Durban as the fifth Test between South Africa and England. England led the series 1-0, so this match was meant to settle it. Expected length, according to Wikipedia: no more than five days.
It lasted 12. The Books Page counts nine days of play, one day rained off and two rest days.
Chasing 696
South Africa scored 530 and 481, England made 316 in their first innings. That left England a target of 696 runs, and instead of collapsing, they kept batting. Bill Edrich, who according to The Books Page had managed just one run in the first innings, scored 219, according to It’s Only Cricket. The Books Page says he became the first Englishman to score a double century in the second innings of a Test. The pitch kept helping the batters: each morning the heavy roller squeezed moisture out of the clay underneath, and the sun baked it hard again.
By 14 March, England were 654 for 5. Only 42 runs short. Then rain stopped play, and the visitors had to go: they needed the train to Cape Town to reach the mailboat home. Missing it would have meant waiting at least another month. The match ended as a draw.
Bonus fact: South Africa’s captain Alan Melville lost track of the days and turned up for breakfast on a rest day. A waiter had to tell him there was no play that day.
The end of an era
Timeless Tests were dropped because nobody could predict when they would finish, which caused scheduling and commercial problems. Durban was the last one. According to Wikipedia, England’s 654 for 5 is the highest fourth-innings score on record in first-class cricket.
Twelve days of cricket, no winner, and the final decision went to the railway timetable.