Cricket in Germany

Cricket in Germany
CountryGermany
National team(s)Germany
International competitions

Cricket in Germany has a history going back to 1858, when a group of people from England and the United States founded the first German cricket club in Berlin.[1][2] 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.[3]

Until recently, much of the cricket was played by British soldiers stationed in Germany. However, in recent years the popularity of the game has increased due to an influx of migrants and refugees from cricket-playing countries [4]

The national organisation for the game is currently the German Cricket Federation (Deutscher Cricket Bund, DCB), founded in 1988.[1] In 2016 there are about 220 cricket teams in the country, up from 70 in 2012.[1] By 2019, the number of teams had increased to 350.[5]

  1. ^ a b c "Cricket-loving Asian migrants take game to Germany". BBC News. Retrieved 7 June 2016.
  2. ^ Schnieder, Lea (12 May 2022). "Nationwide workshops promote the growth of German Women's cricket". Guerilla Cricket. Retrieved 17 May 2022.
  3. ^ History of cricket in Germany Archived 2007-09-29 at the Wayback Machine, at the German Cricket Federation website
  4. ^ "Welcome to Germany: The fastest growing nation in world cricket". The Independent. 12 September 2017. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
  5. ^ "Cricket's momentum builds across Europe". International Cricket Council. Retrieved 14 March 2019.