The International Cricket Council (ICC) is the global

governing body A governing body is a group of people that has the authority to exercise governance over an organization or political entity. The most formal is a government, a body whose sole responsibility and authority is to make binding decisions in a taken ...

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

. It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909 by representatives from Australia, England, and South Africa. In 1965, the body was renamed as the International Cricket Conference and adopted its current name in 1987. ICC has its headquarters in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The ICC currently has 108 member nations: 12 full members that play

Test matches Test match in some sports refers to a sporting contest between national representative teams and may refer to: * Test cricket * Indoor cricket, Test match (indoor cricket) * Test match (rugby union) * Test match (rugby league) * Test match (associa ...

, and 96

associate members Associate may refer to: Academics * Associate degree, a two-year educational degree in the United States, and some areas of Canada * Associate professor, an academic rank at a college or university * Technical associate or Senmonshi, a Japanes ...

. The ICC is responsible for the organisation and governance of cricket's major international tournaments, most notably the

Cricket World Cup The ICC Men's Cricket World Cup is a quadrennial world cup for cricket in One Day International (ODI) format, organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). The tournament is one of the world's most viewed sporting events and consid ...

T20 World Cup T20 World Cup refers to: * Men's T20 World Cup * Women's T20 World Cup {{Short pages monitor

Location

Since its creation, the ICC had the

Lord's Cricket Ground Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket List of Test cricket grounds, venue in St John's Wood, Westminster. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex C ...

as its home, and in 1993 moved its offices to the "Clock Tower" building at the nursery end of the ground. The independently run ICC was funded initially by commercial exploitation of the rights to the World Cup of One Day International cricket. As not all Member countries had double-tax agreements with the United Kingdom, it was necessary to protect cricket's revenues by creating a company, ICC Development (International) Pvt. Ltd, known as IDI outside the UK. This was established in January 1994 and was based in Monaco . For the remainder of the nineties, the administration of IDI was a modest affair. But with the negotiation of a bundle of rights to all ICC events from 2001 to 2008, revenues available to International cricket and the ICC member countries rose substantially. This led to a growth in the number of commercial staff employed by IDI in Monaco. It also had the disadvantage that the council's cricket administrators, who remained at Lord's, were separated from their commercial colleagues in Monaco. The Council decided to seek ways of bringing all of their staff together in one office while protecting their commercial income from tax. The option of staying at Lord's was investigated and a request was made, through

Sport England Sport England is a non-departmental public body under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its role is to build the foundations of a community sport system by working with national governing bodies of sport, and other funded partners, ...

, to the British Government to allow the ICC to have all its personnel (including those working on commercial matters) in London – but be given special exemption from paying UK

corporation tax A corporate tax, also called corporation tax or company tax or corporate income tax, is a type of direct tax levied on the income or capital of corporations and other similar legal entities. The tax is usually imposed at the national level, but i ...

on its commercial income. The British Government was unwilling to create a precedent and would not agree to this request. As a consequence, the ICC examined other locations and eventually settled on the city of

Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...

in the

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...

. The ICC is also registered in

British Virgin Islands The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands and north-west ...

. In August 2005, the ICC moved its offices to

, and subsequently closed its offices at Lord's and Monaco. The move to Dubai was made after an 11–1 vote by the ICC's executive board in favour. While the principal driver of the ICC's move to

was the wish to bring its main employees together in one tax-efficient location, a secondary reason was the wish to move offices closer to the increasingly important new centres of cricketing power in South Asia. Lord's had been a logical venue when the ICC had been administered by the

Marylebone Cricket Club The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's, Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London, England. The club was the governing body of cricket from 1788 to 1989 and retain ...

(MCC) (a situation that lasted until 1993). But the growing power of India and Pakistan in world cricket had made the continued control of international cricket by a British private members club (the MCC) anachronistic and unsustainable. A direct consequence of the changes and reforms instituted in 1993 was eventually to be the move away from Lord's to a more neutral venue.

Income generation

The ICC generates income from the tournaments it organises, primarily the

, and it distributes the majority of that income to its members. Sponsorship and television rights of the World Cup brought in over US$1.6 billion between 2007 and 2015, by far the ICC's main source of income. In the nine-month accounting period to 31 December 2007 the ICC had operating income of $12.66 million, mainly from member subscriptions and sponsorship. In contrast, event income was

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

285.87 million, including $239 million from the 2007 World Cup. There was also investment income of $6.695 million in the period. In 2022 ICC generated US$208,375,000 as an net income. The ICC has no income streams from the bilateral international cricket matches (

One Day International One Day International (ODI) is a format of cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of fifty overs, with the game lasting up to 7 hours. The World Cup, generally held every four yea ...

and

Twenty20 Internationals Twenty20 International (T20I) is a form of Twenty20 cricket, in which each team plays a single innings with a maximum of twenty overs. The matches are played between international teams recognized by the International Cricket Council (ICC). In ...

), that account for the great majority of the international playing schedule, as they are owned and run by its members. It has sought to create other new events to augment its World Cup revenues. These include the

ICC Champions Trophy The ICC Champions Trophy, formerly known as the ICC Knock Out Trophy, is an international One Day International (ODI) cricket tournament organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC) contested by international men's teams. Inaugurat ...

and the ICC Super Series played in Australia in 2005. However, these events have not been as successful as the ICC hoped. The Super Series was widely seen as a failure and is not expected to be repeated, and India called for the Champions Trophy to be scrapped in 2006. The Champions Trophy 2004 event was referred to in '' Wisden 2005'' by the editor as a "turkey of a tournament" and a "fiasco"; although the 2006 event was seen as a greater success due to a new format. The

ICC World Twenty20 The ICC Men's T20 World Cup, formerly the ICC World Twenty20, is a biennial world cup for cricket in Twenty20 International (T20I) format, organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). It was held in every odd year from 2007 to 2009, ...

, first played in 2007, was a success. The ICC's current plan is to have an international tournament every year, with a Twenty20 World Cup played in even number years, the World Cup continuing to be held the year before the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games (Olympics; ) are the world's preeminent international Olympic sports, sporting events. They feature summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a Multi-s ...

, and the ICC Champions Trophy in the remaining year of the cycle. This arrangement began in 2022.

Tournaments and winners

ICC tournaments

Qualifiers

The ICC organizes qualifying tournaments for various international main events. Starting with the

2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup The 2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup was the ninth edition of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup, co-hosted by Cricket West Indies and USA Cricket from 1 to 29 June 2024. It was the first major ICC tournament to include matches played in the United ...

, the Global Qualifiers will no longer take place and teams will qualify directly based on their performance in the previous

T20 World Cup T20 World Cup refers to: * Men's T20 World Cup * Women's T20 World Cup {{Short pages monitor