Cricket in New Zealand
| Cricket in New Zealand | |
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| Country | New Zealand |
| Governing body | New Zealand Cricket |
| National team | New Zealand |
| Nickname(s) | Black Caps |
| First played | 1832 |
| Registered players | 148,215 (2013-14) |
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National competitions
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International competitions
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Cricket is a popular sport in New Zealand, which is one of the ten countries that take part in Test match cricket. Cricket is the national and most popular summer sport, second only in total sporting popularity to rugby.
The national competition is not nearly as widely followed as the case with rugby, but international matches are watched with interest by a large proportion of the population. This parallels the global situation in cricket, whereby the international game is more widely followed than the domestic game in all major cricketing countries.
The reverend Henry Williams provided history with the first report of a game of cricket in New Zealand when he wrote in his diary in December 1832 about boys in and around Paihia on Horotutu Beach playing cricket. In 1835, Charles Darwin and the HMS Beagle called into the Bay of Islands on its epic circumnavigation of the Earth and Darwin witnessed a game of cricket played by freed Māori slaves and the son of a missionary at Waimate North. Darwin in The Voyage of the Beagle wrote:
several young men redeemed by the missionaires from slavery were employed on the farm. In the evening I saw a party of them at cricket.
The first recorded game of cricket in New Zealand took place in Wellington in December 1842. The Wellington Spectator reports a game on 28 December 1842 played by a "Red" team and a "Blue" team from the Wellington Club. The first fully recorded match was reported by the Examiner in Nelson between the Surveyors and Nelson in March 1844.
The first team to tour New Zealand was Parr's all England XI in 1863–64. Between 1864 and 1914, 22 foreign teams toured NZ. England sent 6 teams, Australia 15 and Fiji 1.
On 15–17 February 1894 the first team representing New Zealand played New South Wales at Lancaster Park in Christchurch. NSW won by 160 runs. New South Wales returned again in 1895–96 and NZ won the solitary game by 142 runs, its first victory. The New Zealand Cricket Council was formed towards the end of 1894.
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Wikipedia