Forms of Cricket

Test Cricket

Test cricket is a form of international cricket started in 1877 during the 1876/77 English cricket team's tour of Australia. The first Test match began on 15 March 1877 and had a timeless format with four balls per over. It ended on 19 March 1877 with Australia winning by 45 runs.

The Test Cricket Series between England and Australia is called The Ashes, with the trophy being a tiny fragile urn, reputed to hold the ashes of a bail or cricket ball used during the second Test series between the two countries. This urn was presented to the English Cricket Captain, Ivo Bligh, by a group of Melbourne women, following the Test Series win by the England Cricket Team, during the England Cricket Team's Tour of Australia in 1882/83.

Since then, over 1,700 Test matches have been played and the number of test playing nations has increased to ten with Bangladesh, the most recent nation elevated to Test status, making its debut in 2000. Test matches are two innings games that are nowadays played over five days.

Test Cricket Playing Nations

There are currently ten Test-playing nations. Test status is conferred upon a country by the International Cricket Council. Countries that do not have Test status can only officially play a shortened version of cricket. The nations are listed below with the date of each nation's Test debut shown in brackets:

• Australia (15th March, 1877)
• England (15th March, 1877)
• South Africa (12th March, 1889)
• West Indies (23rd June, 1928)
• New Zealand (10th January, 1930)
• India (25th June, 1932)
• Pakistan (16th October,1952)
• Sri Lanka (17th February, 1982)
• Zimbabwe (18th October, 1992)
• Bangladesh (10th November, 2000)

In 2003, the ICC announced its intention to confer Test status upon Kenya in the near future.

One-Day Cricket

One-day matches, also known as limited overs or instant cricket, were introduced in English domestic cricket in the 1960s due to the growing demands for a shorter and more dramatic form of cricket to stem the decline in attendances. The idea was taken up in the international arena in 1971, during an England team tour of Australia, when a Test match was rained off, and the one-day game has since swollen to become a crowd-pleaser and TV-audience-generator across the globe. The inaugural World Cup in 1975 did much to hasten this. The abbreviations ODI or sometimes LOI (for Limited Overs International) are used for international matches of this type.

In one-day cricket, each team bats for only one innings, and it is limited to a number of overs, usually 50 in international matches. Despite its name, a one-day match may go into a second day if play is interrupted by rain. Day and night matches are also played which extend into the night. Innovations such as coloured clothing, frequent tournaments and result oriented-games often resulting in nail-biting finishes have seen ODI cricket gain many supporters. Strategies such as quick scoring, gra...