The Asociación Peruana de Cricket or Cricket Peru is the official governing body of the sport of cricket in Peru. Cricket Peru is Peru's representative at the International Cricket Council and is an associate member and has been a member of that body since 2007. It is included in the ICC Americas region.
Cricket has been played in Peru for over 150 years, at the splendid Lima Cricket & Football Club (LCFC), and is now undergoing resurgence as a recently admitted Affiliate Member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) and a founder member of Cricket South America (CSA), along with Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
Domestic Cricket
Peru traditionally held an 8- to 10-week season at the LCFC from February until Easter. Most of the fixtures were friendlies, and the most important regular matches on the calendar were traditionally the British Ambassador’s XI vs President of the LCFC XI and Asia vs Rest of the World. The latter is still hotly contested, while the former has been developed into a one-day cricket carnival, The Ambassador's Cup, featuring teams - and ambassadors - representing Australia, India, South Africa and UK.
The Easter holiday, which was traditionally a time for overseas touring teams to visit Lima, is now set aside for the South American Championship (SAC), a non-official, annual tournament between teams representing CSA members i.e. Argentina, Brazil, Chile & Peru, as well as invited national teams. 2014 saw the 11th staging of this tournament, with Lima hosting.
The advantage of playing cricket in Lima is that play is never lost to rain!
In November 2006, a uniquely Peruvian cricket form, Cricket Veloz, was introduced to the cricketing calendar, and the Cricket Veloz Trophy has been hotly contested every year since. Originally designed as a four-team, indoor tournament, in 2009 it was rebranded as an outdoor 6-a-side festival, with great success, fitting nicely into the 150th Anniversary celebrations of the LCFC.
National Twenty20 Championship
In 2007, the Peruvian National T20 Championship was inaugurated, with all games being played at LCFC.
The four founding teams were: 1) The Kiteflyers: the cricketing arm of a multinational local football team - with a British core - founded in 1981.
2) Eidgenossen: a team made up mainly of teachers from local British schools
Eidgenossenschaft is a German word meaning confederation. The term literally translates as "oath fellowship". An Eidgenossenschaft is a confederacy of equal partners, which can be individuals or groups such as states, formed by a pact sealed by a solemn oath. Such an alliance could be either time-limited or unlimited (or "eternal"). An important characteristic is that the partners were always considered equal, in contrast to the oath of fealty in feudal societies with their strict hierarchies. As a political term, it is used most often as a synonym for Switzerland, whose official German name is "Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft", usually translated as Swiss Confederation. An Eidgenosse is a member of an Eidgenossenschaft, and is an expression for "Swiss citizen".
3) Chak De: a team made up of Peruvian residents from the Indian subcontinent. ‘Chak De’ means ‘let’s go’ in Punjabi.
4) LCFC: members and invited players from the Lima Cricket and Football Club
Originally, the T20 Championship was played over three Sundays, with each team playing the others once. But with the success of the format, and the addition of a fifth team, Lima Indians in 2013, the competition has now been expanded into two stages - the Apertura and the Clausura - lasting for 10 weeks of the season. Accordingly, the start of the season has been moved forward to early January.
Tacna, in the south of Peru, in the late 1990s and early 2000s had a sizable Pakistani population, many of whom were involved in the importation of second-hand cars; and from this community they were able to create a team, the Tacna Tigers, which annually visited Lima to play cricket, and provided a number of players for the national side. However, changes to the free trade zone regulations governing business in Tacna, from 2011 onwards, saw the Pakistani cricket community dwindle in size.
International Cricket
Cricket Peru's men's team are known as the 'Llamas', and have competed in international competitions since 1997, usually against other Latin American national sides.
ICC Americas Division III
The Llamas competed three times in the ICC Americas Division III, an officially sanctioned ranking tournament, overseen by the International Cricket Council that offered a pathway to World League Cricket and potentially to playing in the World Cup.