List of Men’s Cricket Test Match Playing Teams

The International Cricket Council (ICC) is the global governing body for international cricket, encompassing men's, women's teams. ICC is governed by the ICC Constitution.

Currently, there are 104 members of the ICC. ICC has two Membership categories which are as follows:

Full Members: These members are part of the governing bodies for cricket of a country recognised by the ICC. These members are authorised to play test matches organised by the ICC. Currently, there are 12 countries included in this list.  Zimbabwe has been included in the ICC list again.

Associate Members: These members do not qualify as a full member but cricket is firmly established and organised in these countries. Currently, there are 92 members in this category.

Currently, there are 12 Test-playing men's teams. All teams represent individual, independent nations, except for the West Indies, England &  Ireland.

Test status is given to a country or group of countries by the International Cricket Council (ICC). Teams that do not have Test-playing status can play in the ICC Intercontinental Cup.

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At the ICC Annual Conference 2017 in London, Afghanistan and Ireland were accepted as Full Members. So the total number of teams allowed to play the test match became twelve.

The list of test match playing teams is as follows;

Interesting to know that the first officially ICC recognised Test match took place on 15–19 March 1877 between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), where Australia won by 45 runs.

Team India played its first test match against England at Lords in 1932 under the Captainship of C K. Nayudu. Englands won this match by 158 runs.

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A question may arise in the mind of the readers of this article that what is the criteria to give the status of test playing team. The International Cricket Council has made criteria to qualify as the test match playing team.

One criterion is as follows;

An associate nation needs to compete and win the Intercontinental Cup, which is a two-year first-class competition for associate nations.

The associate nation which wins the ICC Intercontinental Cup gets a chance to compete with the lowest-ranked Test team once every four years in the ICC Test Challenge.

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