Concept
First-class cricket
Overview
First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is of three or more days scheduled duration between two teams of eleven players each, and is officially adjudged to be worthy of the status by virtue of the standard of the competing teams. Matches must allow for the teams to play two innings each, although in practice a team might play only one innings or none if the match is abandoned.
The etymology of "first-class cricket" is unknown, but the term was used loosely before it acquired official status in 1895, following a meeting of leading English clubs. At a meeting of the International Cricket Council then known as the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) in 1947, it was formally defined on a global basis. A significant omission of the ICC ruling was any attempt to define first-class cricket retrospectively. That has left statisticians with the problem of how to categorise earlier matches for their statistical purposes, especially those played in Great Britain before 1895. The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) has published a list of early matches which have historic importance, and are believed to have been of top-standard.
Test cricket, the highest standard of cricket, is statistically a form of first-class cricket, though the term "first-class" is mainly used to refer to domestic competition. A player's first-class statistics include performances in Test matches as well.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
These preliminaries being concluded, the cases are called on. If it is a day for private cases, the private litigants are called. Four cases are taken in each of the categories defined in the law, and the litigants swear to confine their speeches to the point at issue.
Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution
States what First-class cricket is.
Four numbers are needed to fix the position of an event in the world; these correspond to the time and the three dimensions of space in the old reckoning. These four numbers are called the co-ordinates of the event. They may be assigned on any principle which gives neighbouring co-ordinates to neighbouring events; subject to this condition, they are merely conventional. For example, suppose an aeroplane has had an…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
States what First-class cricket is.
Such a prolonged station will be called a point-track. A point-track is a locus of event-particles. It is defined by reference to one particular time-system, {alpha} say. Corresponding to any other time-system these will be a different group of point-tracks. Every event-particle will lie on one and only one point-track of the group belonging to any one time-system. The group of point-tracks of the time-system…
Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919
States what First-class cricket is.
Philosophers who discussed First-class cricket
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Edward Craig (philosopher).