Belgium national cricket team

The Belgium national cricket team is a team representing the Belgium country in international cricket matches. This team is an associate member of the International Cricket Council since 2005 prior to which, they were an associate member since 1991. At present, this team is playing in Division three of the European Cricket Championship. The captain of this team is Richard Nash and the coach is Fazil Mahmoud. The first recorded match of the Belgium cricket team was in 1905 against the Netherlands team.

The beginning

In Belgium, the first game with right to modern cricket was played by the British soldiers prior to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Research suggests that cricket may be somewhat related to a specific kind of game which got exported from Flanders to England during the 16th century. Moreover, the first match which is believed to being recorded was a painting which depicts cricket being played in 1870. This painting is hanging in the exhibition area of the Lord’s Cricket Ground situated in London. The painting depicts the opening of the Brussels ground used for playing cricket in 1866 by then mayor, Jules Anspach.

In 1905, the national team first played cricket against the Netherlands team. This match was played each year until 1986. Moreover, Belgium had hosted a tournament as a part of their exhibition in 1910 which involved teams from France, the Netherlands and also the MCC. During this period, the Belgium team lost the match against the MCC team by just an inning and lost also to Netherlands by 116 runs.

The Belgium team got its ICC Membership

The Belgium Cricket Federation got formed in 1990. They gained the Affiliate Membership of the ICC a year later in 1991. This team began playing in the European tournament and for the first time in 1999, they played in the ECC Trophy, where they finished in the last position. However, by the next tournament, they improved enormously and reached to the semi finals position in the ECC Trophy in 2001 in Austria. In 2003, they finished in the sixth position in the ECC Trophy. Two years later, the team got promoted to Associate Membership in the year 2005. By 2007, the team played in and even hosted the Division Three of the European Championship.