Cricket in Germany has a history going back to 1850, when a group of people from England and the United States founded the first German cricket club in Berlin. Several more teams were later founded in Berlin and the rest of Germany, as well as a national federation. Cricket lingered on over the following century, with occasional visits of German players to England and British and other foreign teams touring in Germany, but only when it got a foothold in the German universities in the 1980s did the number of German cricket clubs and players start to grow again.[1] Nevertheless much of the cricket to date is played by British soldiers stationed in Germany.
The national organisation for the game is currently the German Cricket Federation (Deutscher Cricket Bund, DCB), founded in 1988. In total there are about 50 cricket clubs in the country.
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Germany has a national team that takes part in the European Championship and has also taken part in the ICC Trophy.
German Cricket is organized in several regions, which all have their own leagues. The winner of those will play for the national championship.
Those regional associations are:
Clubs playing in the league are:
Other clubs include:
Clubs playing in the league are:
This has now been superseded by the Bundesliga Ost, which in 2010 was organised in two divisions, which included the clubs marked * above, with the addition of Dresden and HCCW (Havelländische Cricket Club Werder). Some of these clubs fielded teams in both divisions.
Clubs playing in the league are:
A feature of club cricket in Germany is that many clubs experience rapid fluctuation in membership, which is composed largely of expats playing the sport. Clubs which cannot join a league (mostly due to lack of available members) may still take part in independently arranged friendly matches.
The club's wicket can vary from a grass pitch (grown on the natural soil) to coconut fibre wickets on concrete, flicx® pitches, and do-it-yourself constructions. The size of the field also varies, from a good club size (English standard) to double hockey pitches which the club hires, and unusual fields such as that at Göttingen, which is large, but has a bank that rises up to 4 metres above the level of the square. Indoor cricket is played in various tournaments throughout the winter, mostly in German 3 field gyms, or in indoor tennis halls, in Twenty20 format.
The majority of cricket clubs are organised into six regional leagues. Each region hosts one or two leagues of 6 or 7 clubs. Matches are over 50 overs. In two of the leagues the first and second placed teams meet in play-offs, and the winner of the play-off is the regional champion. At the end of the regional season, national play-offs are held: the northern league champions (NDCV (North), NRCU (North Rhine Westphalia), BCV (Berlin)) play against each other, and the southern teams (HCV (Hesse), BWCV (Baden Württemberg), BYCV (Bavaria)) do likewise. The overall northern and southern winners then play off for the German Championship. Independent of the regional leagues are 20/20 tournaments which are mostly invitational tournaments initiated by one team.
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