England won every game of the first four series (eight Tests in all), at one point, in March 1892, with a second XI under Walter Read, while the first-choice team, led by W G Grace, was simultaneously crushing Australia by an innings and 230 runs in Adelaide.
We seem to be heading for two separate England sides again these days, but the thought that England might field two triumphant Test XIs at once is the stuff of dreams in 1998. One would suit me.
England and Australia had faced each other 30 times before South Africa entered the picture, or rather an England XI entered South Africa. In 1888-89, Major R Gardner Warton, who had played a few times for Essex in that county's pre first-class days, and who had spent five years with the army in South Africa, organised the first England tour there, choosing C Aubrey Smith as captain.
It is possible that to this day Smith remains the most famous of all England captains worldwide simply because in later years he moved to Hollywood and became a movie star, never quite in the Bogart or Gable league, but certainly known to millions who had never heard of Don Bradman or Jack Hobbs.
Aubrey Smith only played once for England, and remains the only chap to have captained England in his only Test. Two Tests were scheduled during Warton's tour, but after leading England to an eight-wicket win at Port Elizabeth (he scored three and took seven wickets), Smith caught a fever and missed the second game at Cape Town. This resulted in an even more impressive England win, by an innings and 202 runs, under the command of M P Bowden.
Bowden, a tragic figure, must be one of the least well-known England captains of all time, even though he holds the record of being the youngest - just 23 years and 144 days old. He was primarily a wicketkeeper, but did not don the gauntlets in either of his two Tests, the regular Surrey wicketkeeper, Henry Wood, doing the Alec Stewart bit.
Montague Bowden, having been run out for nought on his Test debut in Port Elizabeth, made a useful 25 as captain at Newlands, but Wood really delivered with 59, second only to the great Bobby Abel's century, in a modest England total of 292. However, this proved more than enough as Johnny Briggs, Lancashire's immortal slow left-armer, took seven for 17 and eight for 11, routing the colonials for 47 and 43.
Bowden and Aubrey Smith stayed on in South Africa after the tour. They entered the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and before long Smith and Bowden, as their business partnership was called, prospered. Smith also pursued his acting ambitions with panache and considerable local success. However, bust followed boom in their financial enterprises and Smith's personal life hit a new low when he contracted typhoid, pleurisy and pneumonia in one fell swoop. He recovered, but not before his obituary had appeared in the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser.
After that close shave, the subsequent total collapse of Smith and Bowden was probably not much more than a mild irritation to the future movie star. Smith returned to London to pursue his financial activities in the City. Bowden remained in South Africa, where he met a sad end following further commercial disasters.
Having become a liquor runner, Bowden fell from a cart, was trampled by his oxen, and died in Umtali hospital, a ramshackle edifice where his body had to be kept from foraging lions until it could be interred in a coffin made from whisky cases.
Bowden thus added another record to his name by becoming the England captain who had died youngest - he was only 26. Michael Atherton and Devon Malcolm might not look back on their last visit to South Africa with unalloyed cheer, but they had a ball compared with poor old Monty Bowden.
Three more tours to the Veld followed Aubrey Smith's venture, with England's 100 per cent record remaining intact. It was not until 1905/6 that South Africa turned the tide, which they did in grand style against Pelham Warner's side, admittedly not England's finest, winning 4-1.
By this time, South Africa had also played their first series against Australia. Their success against Warner led, in 1907, to the first of the 12 South African tours to England to date, which of course would have been many more but for the years of isolation.
Aubrey Smith eventually became Sir Aubrey, knighted for services to Anglo-American friendship. He died in Beverly Hills, California in December 1948, appropriately on the final day of one of the greatest England-South Africa Tests, that at Durban when Alec Bedser and Cliff Gladwin scrambled a leg bye off the very last ball.
Sir Alec Bedser was one of many distinguished guests at the MCC dinner in honour of Hansie Cronje's team at Lord's two weeks ago; how very few direct links are needed for a romantic and fascinating chain that leads from 19th century cricketing pioneers braving a colonial outpost to the multi-racial opposition from a brave new republic who are our welcome guests this summer.