Cricket South Africa
Encyclopedia
Cricket South Africa is the governing body for professional and amateur cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

. The board was originally created as the United Cricket Board of South Africa in 1991.

History

South Africa first played international cricket in 1889, though the players participating at the time were not aware of the fact. They continued to play regularly series of matches against England, Australia and New Zealand until 1970. The membership rules of the Imperial Cricket Conference
International Cricket Council
The International Cricket Council is the international governing body of cricket. It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909 by representatives from England, Australia and South Africa, renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965, and took up its current name in 1989.The...

 (ICC) meant that when South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 left the Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...

 in May 1961, they also left the ICC. Despite the rules being changed in 1964 to allow other nations to be "Associate" members, South Africa did not reapply. Due to South African apartheid laws, which introduced legal racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...

 to the country in 1948, no non-white (defined under the legislation as either "black", "coloured" or "Indian") player was eligible to play Test cricket for South Africa. The anti-apartheid movement led the ICC to impose a moratorium on tours in 1970.

During South Africa's absence from international cricket, a number of different organisations ran domestic cricket: initially the South Africa Cricket Association (SACA), South African Board of Cricket Control (SACBOC) and the South African African Cricket Board (SAACB). In 1976 these three organisations agreed to establish one single board to govern South African cricket, and that all future cricket in the country would be played on an integrated basis regardless of race or colour. However, the new board – the South African Cricket Union (SACU) – was not recognised by a small dissenting group in the SACBOC, who set up the South African Cricket Board (SACB).

In June 1991, the South African Cricket Union and the South African Cricket Board merged to form the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCB). The unification ended enforced racial separation, and only a month later, on 10 July 1991, South Africa was re-admitted as a full member of the ICC.

Domestic cricket

South Africa's three major domestic competitions are the SuperSport Series
SuperSport Series
The SuperSport Series is the main domestic first class cricket competition in South Africa, first contested in 1889-90. From 1990-91 it became known as the Castle Cup, and from 1996-97 by its current title...

 (four day first class
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 competition), the MTN Domestic Championship
MTN Domestic Championship
The 1 Day Cup is the premier domestic one-day cricket competition of South Africa, its matches having List A status...

 (List A one-day
One-day cricket
Limited overs cricket, also known as one-day cricket and in a slightly different context as List A cricket, is a version of the sport of cricket in which a match is generally completed in one day, whereas Test and first-class matches can take up to five days to complete...

 competition) and Standard Bank Pro 20 Series
Standard Bank Pro 20 Series
The Standard Bank Pro20 Series is the premier Twenty20 cricket competition in South Africa, first contested in the 2003–04 season. The Knights, the Titans and the Cape Cobras have each won the title twice and are the most successful teams....

 (domestic Twenty20
Twenty20
Twenty20 is a form of cricket, originally introduced in England for professional inter-county competition by the England and Wales Cricket Board , in 2003. A Twenty20 game involves two teams, each has a single innings, batting for a maximum of 20 overs. Twenty20 cricket is also known as T20 cricket...

competition). Generally encompassing more than one provincial associate team, six first-class teams take part in these competitions.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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