First-class cricket

First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is of three or more days scheduled duration between two teams of eleven players each, and is officially adjudged to be worthy of the status by virtue of the standard of the competing teams. Matches must allow for the teams to play two innings each, although in practice a team might play only one innings or none if the match is abandoned. The etymology of "first-class cricket" is unknown, but the term was used loosely before it acquired official status in 1895, following a meeting of leading English clubs. At a meeting of the International Cricket Council then known as the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) in 1947, it was formally defined on a global basis. A significant omission of the ICC ruling was any attempt to define first-class cricket retrospectively. That has left statisticians with the problem of how to categorise earlier matches for their statistical purposes, especially those played in Great Britain before 1895. The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) has published a list of early matches which have historic importance, and are believed to have been of top-standard. Test cricket, the highest standard of cricket, is statistically a form of first-class cricket, though the term "first-class" is mainly used to refer to domestic competition. A player's first-class statistics include performances in Test matches as well.