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England Cricket Team

The England cricket team represents England and Wales in international cricket. Previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) from 1903, it has been under the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) since 1997.
 
As a founding nation, England is a full member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) with Test, One Day International (ODI) and Twenty20 International (T20I)-playing status. Until the 1990s, Scottish and Irish players also played for England as those countries themselves were not ICC members.
 
England and Australia, the first teams to play a Test match (15-19 March 1877), also played the first ODI on 5 January 1971. England played their first T20I on 13 June 2005, once more against Australia.
 
As of 11 May 2019, England had played 1,010 Test matches, winning 365 and losing 300 (345 were drawn). The team has won The Ashes on 32 occasions. In ODIs, England have 366 of the 731 they have played. Among its records in major ODI tournaments is that of finishing as runners-up in three Cricket World Cups (1979, 1987 and 1992), and two ICC Champions Trophies (2004 and 2013). England have played 109 T20Is, winning 54 of them. They won the ICC World Twenty20 in 2010, and were runners-up in 2016.
 
England at ICC World Cups
 
England reached the semi-finals of the very first World Cup in 1975 but lost to Australia. Batting first, the team managed to set a paltry target of 94 runs, which Australia chased without breaking a sweat. In the 1979 World Cup, they played the final but lost against West Indies by 92 runs.
 
England hosted the World Cup in 1983 and reached the semi-finals, but their form remained poor; they suffered defeats against New Zealand, Pakistan and the West Indies. In 1987, England reached the final, but lost by seven runs against Australia. They finished as runners-up for a second consecutive time in the 1992 World Cup and suffered an early exit in the 1999 World Cup.
 
The early exit in 1999 World Cup led to the ECB taking over from the MCC as the governing body of England and the implementation of central contracts. The year 1992 had previously seen Scotland severing their ties with the England and Wales team, and beginning to compete as the Scotland national team.
 
Nasser Hussain was appointed the English captain in 1999 but the team continued to struggle. By 2003, having endured another Ashes drubbing as well as another first-round exit from the World Cup, Hussain resigned as captain.
 
In the 2007 Cricket World Cup, England lost to most Test-playing nations they faced, managing to beat only the West Indies and Bangladesh.
 
In the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup, despite beating South Africa and tying with eventual winners India, England suffered shock losses to Ireland and Bangladesh before losing in the quarter-finals to Sri Lanka. And in the 2015 World Cup, they failed to advance from the group stage.
 
History
 
England lost their first home series 1-0 in 1882, an event that gave birth to The Ashes series, the oldest known rivalry in cricket. The start of the 20th century saw mixed results for England as they lost four of the eight Ashes between 1900 and 1914. England suffered their first whitewash after World War I in the 1920-21 season against Australia. They endured a humiliation against Don Bradman's invincible Australian team in the 1948 Ashes series, which proved to be Bradman's final Ashes.
 
From 1950-60, England's form continued to impress, with several crucial victories: England did not lose a series between their 1950-51 and 1958-59 tours of Australia.
 
In 1959, England inflicted their only 5-0 whitewash against India. The early and mid-1960s were a poor period for English cricket. Despite England's strength on paper, Australia held the Ashes and the West Indies dominated England in the early part of the decade. However, from 1968 to 1971, they played 27 consecutive Test matches without a defeat, winning 9 and drawing 18 matches.
 
During this period, they beat New Zealand, India, the West Indies and Pakistan, and regained the Ashes from Australia in 1970-71. The 1970s was a mixed bag for the England team. The early 70s saw the side dominating world cricket, winning the Ashes away in 1971, and then retaining it at home in 1972. The mid-1970s were quite turbulent.
 
Michael Vaughan took over and England won five consecutive Test series prior to facing Australia in the 2005 Ashes series. In June 2005, England played their first ever T20 international match, defeating Australia by 100 runs. Later that year, England defeated Australia 2-1 in a thrilling series to regain the Ashes for the first time in 16 years.
 
Following the 2005 Ashes win, the team suffered from a spate of serious injuries to key players like Vaughan, Andrew Flintoff, Ashley Giles and Simon Jones.
 
In the home Test series victory against Pakistan in July and August 2006, several promising new players emerged. Most notable were the left-arm orthodox spin bowler Monty Panesar, the first Sikh to play Test cricket for England, and left-handed opening batsman Alastair Cook.
 
England won their first ever ICC world championship, the 2010 World Twenty20, with a seven-wicket win against Australia in Barbados. The following winter in the 2010-11 Ashes, they thrashed Australia 3-1 to retain the urn and record their first series win in Australia for 24 years. 

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