Calcutta CFC
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The Calcutta Cricket and Football Club (CC&FC) is a cricket and association football club in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), West Bengal, India. Founded as the Calcutta Cricket Club by British expatriates who had come over with the British East India Company it is known to be in existence by 1792.[1]The club is regarded as the oldest cricket club outside of the British Isles.
The Calcutta Cricket Club merged with the Calcutta Football Club and the Ballygunge Cricket Club over the years to become the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club.
[edit] Controversy over the birth date of the club
There have been various claims over the exact date that the club was founded. The conventionally accepted date is 1792, on the basis that the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, the de-facto authority on cricket matters, has certified this due to a score-card reported by the Madras Courier between the Calcutta Cricket Club against Dum Dum and Barrackpore. [2]
Recent research has discovered a mention of the club in the December 16, 1780 edition of James Augustus Hickey's Bengal Gazette. [3] This claim, if universally accepted, would make the club older than even the Marylebone Cricket Club in London.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Rowland Bowen, Some dates in Indian cricket history, Wisden 1967. Recent Wisdens have neither endorsed nor rejected this.
- ^ Telegraph article on the birth of CCC. Also see Bowen in Wisden 1967.
- ^ Boria Majumdar (ed), Indian Cricket Through the Ages, p.34, quotes the relevant section in full. ISBN 019566786-7
- ^ This does not necessarily mean that either is the oldest club in existence. Among those which claim to be older is the Mitcham Cricket Club which has been around since 1685.
