History
In addition to the match reported in 1897, [1] there are reports of cricket matches played at La Magdalena Jockey Club in 1905, 1907 and 1909. [12] [13] [14]
On 20 May 1955, the Bogotá Cricket Club was created. The first chairman of the club was Englishman Reginald Brand alongside Indian, Rishiraj Patel. That club survives today as Bogota Sports Club, and cricket recently returned to the ground in 2025. [3]
Bogota played Cali in December 1957, including representatives of the Shell company of Colombia. These matches were the first of a series of tests played between Bogotá against Cali or "Rest of Colombia" sides. The matches competed for the "H.E.'s Bat" (His Excellency's bat), a prize donated by British Ambassador and Honorary President of the Club Sir James Joint. The top scorer of the Cali Shell team was Zian Shah. This tradition continued into the 2000s, as the Ambassador's Cup was again contested in 2010-2014. [15] More recently, Colombia's teams contest regular tournaments between teams of many cities.
The first recorded match in Colombia involving players of different countries was played by Bogota against Maracaibo (Shell) in February 1958. The return game was played in June of the same year. These series continued successfully until 1961.
In 1961 the Bogota Cricket Club was merged into the Bogotá Sports Club.
In March 1970, the New Zealand Ambassador's Cricket team visited the B.S.C. and was nearly beaten. That team included future internationals J.F.M. Morrison and A. Roberts.
Other matches were played against Cali, Medellín, Caracas (team included ex-West Indies Test cricketer Tony White), Curaçao, Lima, the Banks, BEA Silver Wing Club, the California Cricket Club (on their South American Tour), the Quidnuncs (including Dudley Owen-Thomas, David Hays and Derek George), and finally in February 1979 Derrick Robins' XI.
The Bogota Sports Club (with Tony White) was the only side to bowl them out (for 184) during their South American tour. Norman Bracht took 5–74 in 20 overs and White 3–70 in 22. Krish Vaidya, was the only player to remain not out with a century. Their side was managed by leading international cricketers of the time including Peter Parfitt (with Henry Blofeld), captained by Chris Cowdrey and included Bill Athey, Graham Stevenson, Tim Lloyd, Spandan Pandya and other good young county cricketers.
Though Cali and Bogotá played each other in 1981, in the eighties and nineties, there were limited cricket appearances in Colombia and internationally due to the decline in the number of expat workers — and thus cricketers — in Colombia.
However, the new millennium brought with it a mini-resurgence in Colombian cricket. The enthusiasm of Colombo-Canadian Norman Bracht, among others, allowed a game to be played in December 2000 between teachers of the Anglo Colombian school in Bogotá and a Bogotá Sports Club team comprising teachers from other schools, companies and the British Embassy. Twenty-six players turned out at the first match, which took place at the Bogotá Sports Club's new venue on the via Cota-Suba in the north of Bogotá.
Matches between teachers and other expats in Bogotá continued in 2001. In May that year, a touring team from Panamá spent a week in the Colombian capital. Panamá, led by Ismael Patel, won the two match series against Bogota Sports Club 2-0. In many ways, this Bogota team was a Colombia team featuring players from other cities, but it was not framed as an international match.
2002 brought further strides for the sport in Colombia as Bogotá took a team to Cali for the first Ambassador's Cup in 21 years. Matches on the tour, which counted on the support of the British Ambassador at the time, Mr Tom Duggan, were held at the Colegio Colombo-Británico in Cali. Around 200 people watched the first game, on Saturday 22 March, which Bogotá won by 25 runs having scored 98 in their allotted 22 overs. In the second match, on Sunday 3 March, Bogotá scored 176, enough to give them victory by 94 runs as Cali managed just 82.
A Colombia international men's cricket team played for the first time in a two-match series against Costa Rica in 2010 at Bogota Sports Club. Colombia fielded a squad of twenty players across the two matches, one team captained by Peter Dale and the other by Patrick Raikes. The series was drawn 1-1, with Andy Farrington, who would go on to captain the national team for around a decade, starring in both matches and Colombian national Camilo Fonseca taking a wicket. Others who would become key people in the development of Cricket in Colombia, such as Andrew Wright also featured. [8]
In 2014 at the same time as an Ambassador's Cup event, and with the rebirth of the game of cricket nationally, the Colombia Cricket Board was first formed as an unincorporated association to administer the sport nationally and the national team. A meeting took place at Cafe el Ingles, Cra 11, Bogota, with representatives of Bogota Sports CC (led by Andrew Wright and including national player Jairo Venegas), Cedritos CC (Cameron Forbes, Andrew Farrington and Travis Crockett) and Cali CC (David Muirhead and others).
Soon after, in October 2014, Colombia hosted its first international cricket tournament, the Amazon Cup, between Peru, Brazil and Colombia. Peru was eliminated in the group stages and Colombia lost the final to Brazil (details of matches below). [16] [17] [18] The following year, 2015, Colombia sent its first men's team to the South American Cricket Championships, which is the leading regional cricket competition. [19]
Colombia hosted both the men and the women's edition of the South American Cricket Championship in 2018 at Los Pinos, Bogota. They took part in the men's tournament only, finishing at fourth place. The women's edition had WT20I status for the first time as per ICC's announcement.
Colombia has participated in every edition of the South American Cricket Championships since 2015 (i.e. 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024), achieving its best finish of third place in 2023. [19]
Colombia's status as a non-ICC cricket playing country is increasingly anomalous, since the country has a long history of strong performance, having beaten all the ICC members of the South American and Central American region (Argentina, Brazil, Panama, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Chile, in some times on multiple occasions) and has an active national cricket scene. With a view to taking this forwards, moves to reinvigorate the Colombian Cricket Board commenced again in 2024, with the confirmation of Paul Reid (long-time national team player and current Colombia men's captain, Barranquilla Cricket Club), Lee Bailey (Bogota Cricket Club) and John Wood (father of rising junior and recent Colombian men's player Jean-Paul Wood) as president, secretary and treasurer, respectively. A new board and board structure was established in 2024 at a meeting during a national tournament in Barranquilla. Representatives of most of the cricket clubs in Colombia (Andrew Farrington - Bogota Bushrangers, Dian Perera - Cali, Travis Crockett and Abhas Srivastava - Medellin, Felix Sullivan - Santa Marta, Andrew Wright - Barranquilla, Karthik Radhakrishna - Bogota Gladiators, Paola Solano - women's cricket) and board advisor Thomas Donegan all joined the group. In December 2024, eight years after Cricket Colombia first sought this, the Colombian Ministry of Sports finally recognised the sport of cricket in Colombia in a resolution calling for the establishment of a federation. [20] The club formally established under the Colombian Sports law was in Medellin, pursuant to a multi-sports corporation registration in early 2025.
