Background information on the ICC Champions Trophy

This is the sixth time the tournament will take place.

It started in 1998 and has taken place every two years since that date.

By the end of this year’s event, the ICC Champions Trophy will have raised US$75million for developing cricket among the ICC’s Associate and Affiliate Members.

The tournament was called the ICC Knock-out on the first two occasions it was contested, in 1998 and 2000 .

The tournament’s name was changed to the ICC Champions Trophy for the 2002 event and subsequent tournaments.

Previous venues for the tournament have been Bangladesh (1998), Kenya (2000), Sri Lanka (2002), England (2004) and India (2006).

The top eight teams on the Reliance Mobile ICC ODI Championship as of 11 March 2008 have been invited to take part in this year’s tournament. Previous events have involved nine teams (1998), 11 teams (2000), 12 teams (2002 and 2004) and 10 teams (2006).

The 1998 and 2000 tournaments had a straight knock-out format; the 2002 tournament was contested by the 10 Full Members plus Kenya (automatic qualification because of its ODI status) and the Netherlands (winner of the ICC Trophy 2001); the 2004 tournament was contested by the 10 Full Members, Kenya (automatic qualification because of its ODI status) and the USA (winner of ICC Six-Nations Challenge held in the UAE, March 2004); the 2006 event included the top six teams on the ICC ODI Championship table as of 1 April 2006 joined by Sri Lanka and West Indies who qualified from the preliminary round that was also contested by Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.

The number of matches in each previous tournament were nine (1998), 10 (2000), 15 (2002 and 2004) and 21 (2006). For the 2008 event, there will be 15 matches.


Previous winners are: South Africa (beat the West Indies in the 1998 final); New Zealand (beat India in the 2000 final); Sri Lanka and India (declared joint winners after the final was rained off), West Indies (beat England in the 2004 final) and Australia (beat West Indies in the 2006 final).