Brief History of Cricket in Kuwait

In late thirties many Englishmen landed in Kuwait to explore and drill oil, the most valuable natural resource of Kuwait. With them came Cricket to this part of the world.  But it was only a time- pass activity and it remained restricted to oil company staff.

By 1947 a large number of expatriates from Asian sub-continent had come to Kuwait. It was then that clubs were formed and some tournaments were organized during winter.

From this point onward Cricket kept growing in terms of teams and match venues. Many organizations were conducting tournaments in the country but there was no central authority. During eighties and early nineties it was a common practice that a player may be representing two, three or even more teams in the same season.  In every venue he may be putting a different team cap. The tournaments took extra ordinary time to complete and some times were delayed even to the next season. Many of the tournaments were never completed. The reason was the non-availability of the players as they were playing for many clubs at same time. During this period the participating teams were to provide the umpires failure to do so resulted in a penalty. The teams to avoid the penalty used to appoint any Dick and Harry no matter even if they did not have the very basic knowledge of Laws of Cricket.

By mid- nineties few people with a very sincere desire and vision for the development of cricket in Kuwait joined together and did the spade work for stream lining the cricket affairs.

After a very extensive series of meetings and deliberations all the major cricket centers decided to form a central body. Thus before the start of 1996-7 Kuwait Cricket Association came into being. Kuwait Cricket Association was granted an affiliation with the national sports authorities.

In 1998 International Cricket Council (ICC) granted Kuwait the status of Affiliate Member. In 1999 ACC granted Kuwait Associate Membership.