The somewhat strange structure of international cricket has puzzled many, and it’s evident from discussion on our forum that that puzzlement isn’t getting any less as time goes by. It’s deeply rooted in cricket’s history, and you can’t understand it without knowing something of that unique and peculiar story.

The Imperial Cricket Conference was established in 1909, at a meeting in London of representatives of England, Australia and South Africa, the three countries which had by that date played ‘Test’ matches against each other. Even that basic fact is odder than it looks at first sight, and its consequences continue to haunt world cricket a century later.

Although Test cricket has always been the gold standard of the sport, its origins were surprisingly impromptu: the first match between Australia and England, at Melbourne in 1877, was essentially a private initiative by the Victorian cricket authorities, and the term ‘Test match’ did not come into existence until 1885. Australia did not even exist as a political entity for most of the first quarter-century of Test history, the six separate colonies only forming the Australian Federation in 1901.

The Australian Board of Control – an interesting title in itself – had, moreover, not been established until 1905, delayed by problems between the Victorian Cricket Association and the powerful Melbourne Cricket Club, and the new Board’s control over the players was initially tenuous, leading to a bitter dispute in 1911-12. So the Board which joined the newly-formed ICC in 1909 was scarcely an uncontested spokesman for Australian cricket.

The situation in South Africa was even less clear-cut. When C Aubrey Smith’s team visited there in 1888-89, playing two matches against ‘South Africa’ which were later declared to be the first Tests between the countries, ‘South Africa’ in the modern sense didn’t exist either. The only official claimant to the name in 1889 was the South African Republic, the independence of which had been recognised by Britain in 1852 and (after an attempted annexation and a brief war) again in 1881.

But it was Afrikaans-speaking, and cricket was largely confined to the English-speaking population. The majority of the players who represented ‘South Africa’ in 1888-89 came from the Cape Colony, although four turned out for Transvaal when the first Currie Cup match was contested the following season.

They were presumably uitlanders, English speakers in the Afrikaans-speaking Transvaal Republic, and just how contentious their presence was was demonstrated shortly before a later English visit to southern Africa in 1895-96, when Cecil Rhodes instigated an abortive armed attack on Transvaal. Lord Hawke’s men demonstrated their sympathies by visiting the perpetrators in prison, but they did play one of the three Tests in Johannesburg, and may have made a courtesy call on Paul Kruger, the President of the South African Republic.

By 1909 a bloody war had been fought between Britain and the Afrikaans-speaking republics, and the bill which would lead to the creation of the Union of South Africa the following year was going through the British parliament. The initiative for the establishment of the Imperial Cricket Conference, indeed, came from a South African, the entrepreneur Abe Bailey, who saw it as a way of achieving his cherished ambition of a triangular tournament between the three Test-playing countries.

That explains why those three were involved and no others, for it was not self-evident that they were the only possible founding members of the new organisation. New Zealand, for example, had had its own Cricket Council since 1894 and the MCC had toured there in 1906-07, playing two matches against a national representative side, but it was evidently considered that they were not fit to sit at the same table as the senior countries of international cricket.

The same evidently applied even more strongly to the West Indies and India, although a privately-organised English touring team had lost a three-match series against a Combined West Indies side in 1901-02; MCC would not visit the Caribbean until 1911, winning both matches against the combined side, and those games were not deemed worthy of Test status.

And as my colleague Andrew Nixon and others have pointed out, Philadelphia had been recognised as a first-class team through much of the later nineteenth century, and the map of international cricket would have looked very different had the USA been invited to join the ICC. But Philadelphian cricket was in decline by 1909, and the rise of baseball confined the game to the margins of American life.

With the establishment of the Imperial Cricket Conference, England, Australia and South Africa became the gate-keepers of Test status. ‘Really MCC’s Colonial Branch’, in Derek Birley’s words, the Conference would determine which countries could be recognised as worthy of playing at the highest level of international cricket.

In 1926 it took a bold step, doubling its members by admitting India, New Zealand and the West Indies; but a two-tier voting structure was created, with the three ‘Foundation Members’ protecting their position by giving themselves a veto over any proposal. That power was not removed until 1993. At first, moreover, the admission to Test status was theoretical, for the New Zealand side which toured England and Scotland in 1927 was not allocated a full international match.

The West Indies were more fortunate, playing a three-Test series the following year, and in 1929-30 four Tests were included in the itinerary of the MCC side which visited New Zealand. India were not allowed to play a Test until 1932, when CK Nayudu’s side lost by 158 runs at Lord’s in the only Test of their tour.

The pattern which was thus established formed the basis for everything that has followed, and for many years little was done to change the world order which was created in London in 1909. It was England, Australia and South Africa which called the shots, dominating the corridors of power as effectively as their teams initially dominated on the field.

Not until the 1960s would there be any real shift in the balance of power. But that’s the next stage of the story.