There was no formal structure of international cricket until the early twenty first century. It had long been traditional for countries, without any intervention from a body such as the International Cricket Council (ICC), to organize for themselves the various cricket matches. The ICC later committed the Test cricket playing nations to play each other in a programme of matches over a period of 10 years known as the Future Tours Programme (FTP). This system was set up to encourage some of the better-established countries to play the lesser nations more frequently.
Read more about International Cricket: General Structure, ICC Ten Year Plan, ODI Championship
Famous quotes containing the word cricket:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)