England cricket team

The England cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales, operating under the auspices of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
The sport of cricket evolved in England, and England is a founding Test cricket, One-day International and Twenty20 nation. England played in the first ever Test match in 1877 (against Australia in Melbourne) and also the first ever One-day International in 1971 (also against Australia in Melbourne).

Performances

England has traditionally been one of the stronger teams in international cricket, fielding a competitive side for most of cricket's history. After Australia won The Ashes for the first time in 1881-82 England had to fight with them for primacy and one of the fiercest rivalries in sport dominated the cricket world for seventy years. In 1963 this duopoly of cricket dominance began to fall away with the emergence of a strong West Indies team.
England failed to win a series against the West Indies between 1969 and 2000. England similarly failed to compete with Australia for a long period and the The Ashes stayed in Australian hands between 1989 and 2005. England struggled against other nations over this period as well and after a series loss to New Zealand in 1999 they were ranked at the bottom of the ICC Test cricket ratings. From 2000, English cricket had a resurgence and England reached the final of the ICC Champions Trophy in 2004 and regained The Ashes in 2005. The team is currently ranked second behind Australia in the Test rankings, but One Day performances have been very poor with England falling to 8th place in the ICC rankings.
In the 2006/07 tour of Australia The Ashes were lost in a 0-5 "whitewash" (see 2006-07 Ashes series) but England did succeed in clinching victory in the Commonwealth bank ODI Tri-series against Australia and New Zealand. The loss of The Ashes prompted the announcement by the England and Wales Cricket Board of an official review of English cricket amid much criticism from the media, former players and fans.

Eligibility of players

The England cricket team represents England and Wales. However, under ICC regulations[3], players can qualify to play for a country by nationality, place of birth or residence, so (as with any national sports team) some people are eligible to play for more than one team.
ECB regulations[4] state that to play for England, a player must be a British or Irish citizen, and have either been born in England or Wales, or have lived in England or Wales for the last four years. This has led to players of many other nationalities becoming eligible to play for England. England have been captained by a Scot, Mike Denness, and three South Africans, Tony Greig, Allan Lamb and Andrew Strauss. The South African cape coloured, Basil D'Oliveira, famously played for England during the apartheid era. In recent times Graeme Hick (Zimbabwe); Andrew Caddick (New Zealand); Geraint Jones (Australia via Papua New Guinea); and Kevin Pietersen (South Africa) have all played for England. Some players have played for another (non Test-playing) country as well as England, for example Gavin Hamilton who played for Scotland in the 1999 World Cup and later played one Test match for England, while Ed Joyce played for Ireland in the ICC Trophy before making his England ODI debut in June 2006 against his former team.