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First-class cricket is the highest standard of domestic or international cricket matches. A regular first-class cricket match is usually scheduled for three or more days and every match is supposed to grant each participating team to play two innings each. However, in reality, there have been several matches where a team ended up playing one innings or none.

 

 

While in One-Day Cricket, where there is only one innings per team, the number of innings is limited to a certain number of overtime, in First-Class Cricket there is a time limit for the entire game. Rarer are games without a limit on the number of days played. The term “first-class” itself in fact refers to the quality of the teams, not the competition. Test Cricket however is the highest standard of the game of cricket while the term “first-class” usually is being used in the context of domestic competitions.

Even though it is almost impossible to say when the term has been used for the first time in history, it gained official status by 1895 after a meeting of leading English clubs in 1894. In 1947 the Imperial Cricket Conference deiced that it would become the global standard. All matches that have been played before 1895 in Great Britain have been subsequently classified as important matches.

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First-Class History & Origin

Since when exactly First-Class Cricket exists, or since when games have this status and can be included in the corresponding statistics, is generally disputed.

Nowadays, the year 1864 is considered to be the starting point of first-class matches by many experts. That’s the year since overarm bowling has been allowed which was a huge innovation back in the days. Cricket matches that have been played before the era of overarm bowling, however, have also been suggested for first-class cricket. These games started around 1827 and became officially recognized by 1835.

The influential Association of Cricket Statisticians & Historians (ACS) has published a list of all games they consider qualified, starting with the year 1801. They did that to include at least all encounters between gentlemen vs. players. The ACS qualifies these early matches as “Great Matches” or “Important Matches” and most recently the association even suggested the year 1660 because back then there were games between teams who considered themselves to be more than “village teams”.

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First-Class Application

The ICC published a definition in 1947 that would not have “retrospective effect”:

A match of three or more days’ duration between two sides of eleven players officially adjudged first-class, shall be regarded as a first-class fixture. Matches in which either team has more than eleven players or which are scheduled for less than three days shall not be regarded as first-class. The Governing body in each country shall decide the status of teams.

 

 

According to this new definition of first-class cricket, a match is first-class if it fulfills the following requirements. A match needs to be scheduled for three or more days, each side has eleven players, and there are two innings per side. Moreover, the game is supposed to be played on natural turf and has to take place at a venue that meets certain standard criteria. Furthermore, the Laws of Cricket have to apply to the game as well and the sport’s governing body in the appropriate nation, or the ICC itself, needs to officially recognize the game as first-class.

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The International Cricket Council published “The Classification of Official Cricket” in 2010 that also provided detailed criteria that had to apply if a match was supposed to achieve a certain categorization. The ICC attached a list of the types a match that should qualify. However, that list is not exhaustive which means that several other types of matches could also be considered to be first-class games.

 

 

Since first-class is pretty much a statistical concept, the historical approach has more depth and therefore there have been several controversies between historians regarding cricket matches that have been played before the official definition of the ICC in 1947. There are several different opinions on when the first actual first-class game took place and many important sources such as the CricketArchive consider Hampshire versus All-England at Broadhalfpenny Down on 24 and 25 June 1772 to be the first first-class match in the history of cricket.

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