Nigeria

Cricket has been played in Nigeria since the late 19th century when the game was introduced by the British. English missionaries and army personnel further spread the sport. Contacts between the administration in Lagos and their counterparts in Gold Coast (now Ghana) led to an international at Race Course (now Tafawa Balewa Square), Lagos on 25 May 1904, the Gold Coast winning by 22 runs. The match became an annual fixture and for the first three matches was multi-racial. The fourth fixture in December 1906 was for Europeans only, and the African population started their own annual fixture in 1907. Internationals stopped for the First World War, and did not restart until the mid-1920s. Between the two world wars, cricket began to become more formally organised in the country with two cricket associations for the Europeans and Africans being formed in 1932 and 1933 respectively. First-class cricketers from England began to appear in the annual matches against Gold Coast, and the 1939 match, the last before World War II, ended in a 58-run win for the Gold Coast. Matches resumed after the war with a five-day match in Lagos in 1947 which ended in a draw. The 1949 match went the way of the Gold Coast. As the number of Europeans working in the country reduced, the quality of the African players increased and cricket began to be organised on multi-racial lines in 1956.

Following Nigeria's independence in 1960, there was much interest in cricket. Annual matches against Sierra Leone and The Gambia began in 1964, and were evenly contested until the late 1970s, when football began to become more popular in the country. Cricket began a process of decline, and when Tanzania toured in 1974, Nigeria lost two of the three matches and drew the other. They also lost heavily to the MCC in 1976. Internal problems with both the Nigeria Cricket Association and in Nigeria itself led to a decline in standards, though Nigeria formed a majority of the players on the West Africa cricket team that became an ICC associate member in 1976. The West Africa team took part in the ICC Trophy tournaments of 1982 and 1997 before withdrawing from the 2001 tournament in Ontario. Nigeria still continued to play on their own on occasion, though they sometimes withdrew from tournaments, as at the 1998 Africa Cricket Association Championship. The West African Cricket Conference ceased to exist in 2002, and Nigeria became an associate member of the ICC in their own right the same year.