Bicentennial Test
| The Bicentennial Test | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | 29 January 1988 – 2 February 1988 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Australia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Result | draw | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Player of the series | David Boon | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Teams | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 England
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 Australia
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| Captains | |||
| Mike Gatting | Allan Border | ||
| Most runs | |||
| 139 Chris Broad
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196 David Boon
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| Most wickets | |||
| 3 Graham Dilley 3 Eddie Hemmings
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4 Peter Taylor 3 Steve Waugh
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The Bicentennial Test was a single Test cricket match played between Australia and England at the Sydney Cricket Ground in celebration of the bicentenary of permanent colonial settlement in Australia. The match took place from 29 January to 2 February 1988 and was drawn. It did not count as part of The Ashes series, in the same way as the Centenary Tests in 1977 and 1980 also were excluded from the Ashes lists.
The match was played in the middle of an England tour to New Zealand, where the team later played three Test matches, all of them also drawn. Previously the same winter, the England team had toured Pakistan, and Australia had hosted Tests and One Day Internationals against New Zealand and Sri Lanka (the single Test against Sri Lanka came after the Bicentennial Test, but all other matches were before it).
Sydney's reputation for favouring spin bowling led both sides to pick two specialist spin bowlers and to favour medium-pace or fast-medium bowling over out-and-out speed.
England were captained by Mike Gatting, fresh from his finger-wagging confrontation with umpire Shakoor Rana, and lacked several of the big name players of recent years, such as Graham Gooch, David Gower, Allan Lamb, and Ian Botham.
The team was, in batting order:
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