Wales national cricket team

The Welsh cricket team has appeared on a number of occasions. Generally however, Welsh players are represented in international play by England.

History

From 1923 to 1930 Wales played 16 first-class matches, and had some success against touring teams, drawing with the New Zealanders in 1927 and beating the West Indians a year later, as well as losing by only ten runs to the South Africans in 1929. Sydney Barnes, by this time well into his fifties, took 49 first-class wickets for Wales, including 7-51 in that 1928 win over the Caribbean tourists.

Wales' next significant appearances came in the 1979 ICC Trophy, a competition for which they had not actually had to qualify but instead appeared to make up the numbers because several ICC members had not entered the competition. Playing in Group 3, they had a reasonable tournament, opening with a win over the Netherlands in a rain-affected game and also beating Israel; they lost to the USA by eight runs and their game against Sri Lanka was abandoned without a ball being bowled.

Wales took part in the Triple Crown Tournament between 1993 and 2001; this was a competition involving Wales, Scotland, Ireland and an amateur England XI. They had little success, however, never finishing out of the bottom two in the points table. From 2002 to 2004 Wales played a 50-over challenge match against England each June. In the first of these games they recorded a shock eight-wicket victory, with Steve James making 83 not out, though the other two games went to England. Wales' team consisted mostly of Welsh cricketers, although there were a scattering of non-Welsh Glamorgan players such as Michael Kasprowicz and Dean Cosker.

In 1988, a Wales Minor Counties team under the control of the Welsh Cricket Association, the governing body for amateur cricket in Wales made its first appearance in the Holt Cup, a one-day tournament for minor-county teams. Since then, the Wales MC side has appeared regularly in the NatWest Trophy (and its successor, the C&G Trophy) as well as in the Minor Counties Championship, their most notable result probably the seven-wicket win over Denmark in the first round of the 2004 C&G Trophy (which due to the vagaries of the schedule was actually played in August 2003).

Recently there have been calls from Welsh fans for the country to be represented by its own national team as in other sports. Criticism has been made of the England and Wales Cricket Board using only the England name whilst utilising Welsh players such as Simon Jones, who was instrumental in England winning the Ashes from Australia in 2005. [ [http://criced.blogspot.com/ Campaign for a truly National Welsh Cricket Team] ]

Notable Welsh cricketers

The following people have played Test cricket for England -
* Johnnie Clay
* Robert Croft
* Jeff Jones
* Simon Jones
* Tony Lewis
* Austin Matthews
* Hugh Morris
* Gilbert Parkhouse
* Pat Pocock
* Greg Thomas
* Maurice Turnbull
* Cyril Walters
* Steve Watkin
* Allan Watkins

The following people have not played Test cricket but have had notable first class cricket careers -
* Emrys Davies
* Alan Jones
* Eifion Jones
* Don Shepherd
* Wilfred Wooller

References

ee also

*Welsh women's cricket team

External links

* [http://www.welshcricket.org/ Welsh Cricket Association]