page_title: Sport in the United Kingdom
section_title: Cricket
hierarchical_section_title: Sport in the United Kingdom / By sport / Team sports / Cricket
caption_attribution_description: English: William Gilbert "W. G." Grace (1848–1915), English cricketer, taking guard. Signed in ink in the lower white border.
context_page_description: Sport in the United Kingdom plays an important role in British culture. The United Kingdom has given birth to a range of major international sports including association football, badminton, billiards, bowls, boxing, cricket, croquet, curling, darts, golf, fives, hockey, netball, rugby, tennis, table tennis, snooker, squash, and water polo. The standardisation of various sports, such as in rowing, dancesports and motorsports occurred in the United Kingdom.
  This has meant that in the infancy of many sports, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland formed among the earliest separate governing bodies, national teams and domestic league competitions. After 1922 some sports formed separate bodies for Northern Ireland though some continued to be organised on an all-Ireland basis.
  In a small number of sports, these teams are supplemented by high-profile events featuring a combined team representing one or more nations.
  For information on sports in a British home nation you may wish, therefore, to consider reading the Sport in England, Sport in Scotland, Sport in Wales or Sport in Northern Ireland articles, or the Sport in Ireland article where appropriate.
context_section_description: The early reference to the separate national identities in the United Kingdom is perhaps best illustrated by the game of cricket. Cricket is claimed to have been invented in England. The national sport of England is cricket, but England has no team of its own, instead fielding a joint team with Wales. The England cricket team, controlled by the England and Wales Cricket Board, (commonly shortened to just "England" and "ECB" respectively) was the only national team in the United Kingdom with Test status until Ireland, which represents both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, received Test status in June 2017. Each summer two foreign national teams visit and play seven Test matches and numerous One Day Internationals, and in the British winter the team tours abroad. The highest profile rival of the team is the Australian team, with which it competes for The Ashes, one of the most famous trophies in British sport.
  There are eighteen professional county clubs, seventeen of them in England and one in Wales. Each summer the county clubs compete in the first class County Championship, which consists of two leagues of nine teams and in which matches are played over four days. The same teams also play the one day National League, a one-day knock out competition called the Friends Provident Trophy, and the short-form Twenty20 Cup. English cricket grounds include Lord's, The Oval, Headingley, Old Trafford, Edgbaston and Trent Bridge. Cardiff's Sophia Gardens ground has also become increasingly popular in recent years. Team members are drawn from the main county sides, and include both English and Welsh players. It is by no means equal to football in finance, attendance or coverage, but it has a high profile nonetheless. It is probably the second most widely covered sport in England and third most widely covered sport in Wales and the fortunes of the England team are closely followed by many people who never attend a live game.
  Scotland and Ireland both have their own cricket teams, but the game is neither as popular nor their teams as successful as the English and Welsh team. Ireland did not receive Test status until 2017, and Scotland still does not have Test status. Since Ireland did not play its first Test until 2018, Scotland still does not play Tests, and both have only recently started to play in full One Day Internationals, many Scots and Irish previously played in, and captained, the England and Wales side; the current side for example includes Eoin Morgan, a Dublin-born cricketer who has represented Ireland against England at the 2007 Cricket World Cup, and captained England against Ireland in 2011.
caption: Cricketer W. G. Grace was the most celebrated British sportsman of the 19th century
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