Wanderers Stadium


The Imperial Wanderers Stadium is a stadium situated just south of Sandton in Illovo, Johannesburg in Gauteng Province, South Africa. Test, One Day and First class cricket matches are played here. It is also the home ground for the Highveld Lions, formerly known as Gauteng.

History

The stadium has a seating capacity of 34,000, and was built in 1956 to replace the Old Wanderers Stadium. It was completely overhauled following South Africa's readmission to international cricket in 1991. In 1996, five new floodlight masts replaced the existing four masts, enabling day-night limited-overs cricket. It is nicknamed 'The Bullring' due to its design and intimidating atmosphere.
On 1 October 2004, the Wanderers Clubhouse was virtually destroyed by fire. At that stage it was known as Liberty Life Wanderers, but as from the 2008/09 season, Bidvest Group took up the sponsoring of the ground, thus it became its present-day name of BIDVest Wanderers Stadium until the end of September 2019.
On 4 October 2019, the Wanderers Stadium announced a new naming rights deal with Imperial Logistics. The stadium is now referred to as Imperial Wanderers Stadium

Domestic hosting

The stadium had also hosted the 2009 Indian Premier League's second semi-final and the final in which the Deccan Chargers beat the Royal Challengers Bangalore to grab the championship title.
The Wanderers Stadium also hosted a rugby union test match in April 1980 between South Africa and the South American Jaguars while Johannesburg's normal venue, Ellis Park Stadium, was being redeveloped.

Trivia

The ground is among the most historically significant cricket grounds of the twenty-first century. It has staged some of the most important matches in ODI and T20I history, and has witnessed a number of outstanding world records.
The 2003 Cricket World Cup final was held at the Wanderers Stadium. This stadium also hosted one of the greatest One-day international matches, played between South Africa and Australia in which a world record score of 434 was chased down by South Africa.
On 18 January 2015, the Wanderers stadium saw South Africa's AB de Villiers break the 19-year-old record for fastest ODI half-century, previously held by Sri Lankan maestro Sanath Jayasuriya, by making 50 off 16 balls against the West Indies. In the same match, he also broke Corey Anderson's fastest ODI century record by making 100 off 31 deliveries. He finished on 149, caught on the boundary in the final over, scored off 44 balls with a strike rate of 338.63.
On 21 February 2016, AB de Villiers scored the fastest 50 for South Africa in a T20I against England.
In July 2018, the stadium hosted former US President, Barack Obama at the Nelson Mandela Lecture.