Around 1888 a deputation consisting of Hermann Eckstein, J.B. Taylor, Jacob Swart, Llewellyn Andersson and others rode to Pretoria to meet with President Paul Kruger.

[2]: 647 [2]: 115  The ground was first called Kruger's Park but was later renamed Wanderers Club, with Hermann Eckstein and its first chairman and J.B. Taylor as its vice-chairman.

[2]: 148  The grounds would host its first cricket test match on 2 March 1896 when South Africa played England.

[3] The South African sports journalist E. W. Ballantine described the playing surface as it was at the time of the Test match against the touring Australians in 1902: The ground is a bare tract of land, dark red in colour, and in the centre of the Oval a green patch of cocoanut matting, 8ft.

The fielding is generally true, notwithstanding that the presence of a few small pebbles would occasionally give the ball a little bit of hop.

[2]: 350  There was opposition to the idea by the people of Johannesburg when a 100 ft strip of the Wanderers ground was proposed with the South African Railways offering £31,000 and the club wanting the amount doubled.

It landed in a train standing at one of the platforms at the adjacent old Johannesburg station and was only discovered two days later in Cape Town.