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First-class cricket is a standard of the sport of cricket comprising matches of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each, officially adjudged to be first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams. Matches must allow for the teams to play two innings each although, in practice, a team might only play one innings or none at all. First-class cricket, along with single wicket, List A and Twenty20, is one of the concepts included in any definition of major cricket. The origin of the term "first-class cricket" is unknown but it was used loosely for important matches before it acquired an official status, effective in 1895, following a meeting of leading English clubs in May 1894. Subsequently, at a meeting of the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) in May 1947, it was formally defined on a global basis. A major omission of the ICC ruling was any attempt to define first-class cricket retrospectively. This has left historians, and especially statisticians, with the problem of how to categorise earlier matches, especially those played before 1895 in Great Britain. Test cricket, although the highest standard of cricket, is statistically a form of first-class cricket, although the term "first-class" is commonly used to refer to domestic competition only. A player's first-class statistics include his performances in Test matches. ==MCC ruling, May 1894== Before 1895, "first-class cricket" was a common term used loosely to suggest that a match had a high standard; adjectives like "great" and "important" were also loosely applied to high standard matches. There was at the time no concept of what became Test cricket and so an international match would be called a first-class one, as would any match involving two major county clubs. At the beginning of the 1860s, there were only four formally constituted county clubs: Sussex County Cricket Club is the oldest, formed in 1839, and it had been followed by Kent, Nottinghamshire and Surrey. In the early 1860s, several more clubs were founded and questions began to be raised in the sporting press about which should be categorised as first-class, but there was considerable disagreement in the answers. In 1880, the Cricket Reporting Agency was founded. It acquired influence through the decade especially by association with ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'' (''Wisden'') and the press came to generally rely on its information and opinions.〔ACS, ''First-class Match Guide'', p. 4.〕 The term acquired official status, though limited to matches in Great Britain, following a meeting at Lord's Cricket Ground (Lord's) in May 1894 between the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) committee and the secretaries of the clubs involved in the official County Championship, which had begun in 1890. As a result, those clubs became first-class from 1895 along with MCC, Cambridge University, Oxford University, senior cricket touring teams (i.e.., Australia and South Africa at that time) and other teams designated as such by MCC (e.g., North v South, Gentlemen v Players and occasional "elevens" which consisted of recognised first-class players).〔Birley, p. 145.〕 Officially, therefore, the inaugural first-class match was the opening game of the 1895 season between MCC and Nottinghamshire at Lord's on 1 and 2 May, MCC winning by 37 runs.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=CricketArchive )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「First-class cricket」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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