#first cricket

First Organised Cricket in New Zealand — Otago and Nelson, Early 1850s

Cricket arrived in New Zealand with the first organised British settlements in the 1840s. By the early 1850s organised club cricket was established in Nelson and Otago — the two principal South Island settlements — and matches between local clubs were drawing settler crowds. The game spread rapidly with the Canterbury and Otago settlement schemes, laying the foundations for New Zealand first-class cricket a generation later.