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The International Cricket Council (ICC) is cricket's global governing body, founded at Lord's on 15 June 1909 — as the Imperial Cricket Conference — by Australia, England and South Africa. It changed its name twice more: to the International Cricket Conference in 1964, and to its current title, the International Cricket Council, in 1989. It now has 108 member nations by the ICC's own count, of which 12 hold full, Test-playing status.
From three founders to a global body
The Conference's original members were the country boards of Australia, England and South Africa. West Indies, New Zealand and India were added as full members in 1926, doubling the number of Test-playing nations to six; Pakistan followed in 1952 as the seventh. South Africa left the body in 1961, after leaving the Commonwealth, and stayed absent from international cricket for three decades until it was re-admitted in July 1991, following the end of apartheid.
Three names, three eras
| Era | Name | Key change |
|---|---|---|
| 1909–1963 | Imperial Cricket Conference | Founded by Australia, England and South Africa |
| 1964–1988 | International Cricket Conference | Associate-member category introduced, opening the body to non-Test nations |
| 1989–present | International Cricket Council | First independent president, Colin Cowdrey; the MCC president no longer automatically headed the body |
The presidency itself was phased out in April 2016 in favour of an elected chairman, a role created in 2014, and the organisation's headquarters moved from Lord's to Dubai in 2005, where it remains.
Full Members and Associate Members today
Full membership — Test status — now belongs to 12 nations: Australia, England, South Africa, West Indies, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, and, since 2017, Afghanistan and Ireland, the most recent additions. Every other member nation is now simply an Associate Member, a single category that absorbed the old, separate tier of "affiliate" members entirely when that tier was abolished in 2017 — there is no longer a three-tier structure, only Full and Associate.
A century of incremental growth
The associate tier, introduced in 1964, brought in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Fiji and the United States as its first members; Bermuda, Denmark, East Africa and the Netherlands followed in 1968, and a wave of further associates joined through the 1970s and 1980s as the game spread beyond its original Test-playing core. The ICC organised its first Cricket World Cup in 1975, and has since expanded its reach deep into the playing side of the sport: the third umpire, with access to video replays, arrived in 1992; the Duckworth-Lewis method for resetting rain-affected run chases followed in 1997; and the Decision Review System, which lets players challenge on-field decisions using ball-tracking and infra-red technology, was used in a Test match for the first time in 2008.
What the ICC actually does
The ICC runs the sport's global events — the ODI and T20 World Cups, the World Test Championship and the Champions Trophy, in both the men's and women's game — appoints the umpires and match referees for international fixtures, and enforces the ICC Code of Conduct. Its Anti-Corruption Unit was set up in the wake of the match-fixing scandals that shook the sport around 2000, most notoriously the Hansie Cronje affair. What the ICC does not do is write the Laws of the game: those remain the copyright and responsibility of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which has held that role since 1788, well before the ICC existed. The ICC also has no say over bilateral series between member boards, or over domestic cricket within its member countries.
Looking ahead
Cricket returns to the Olympics at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, in the Twenty20 format — its first appearance on the Olympic programme since a single match at Paris in 1900, the sport's only previous outing at the Games.
For the origins of the format the ICC now organises through the World Test Championship, see Beginning and Growth of Test Cricket; for a full chronological timeline, see Important Dates in the history of cricket.