after a
watercolour by
Percy Carpenter, depicting a
Calcutta Cricket Club match played at Eden Gardens. The
Calcutta Cricket Club was founded in 1792 with membership restricted to Europeans. The team's earliest known match was reported 23 February 1792 in the
Madras Courier, Calcutta playing a team from
Barrackpore and
Dumdum.
Eden Gardens was established as the club's home stadium in 1864. It had been a park called Auckland Circus Gardens, named after
George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland, who was the
Governor-General of India from 1836 to 1842. It was renamed Eden Gardens in 1841, in honour of Auckland's two sisters. For the first time, a team representing Bengal was formed in December 1889 for a match against
an English touring team at Eden Gardens. In January 1923, a Bengal team took part in the
Nagpur Provincial Tournament and, having defeated a Central Provinces XI in their semi-final, lost the final against
Bombay. The Bengal team in this competition included a couple of native players but, as before, it was principally a colonial enterprise. The
Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) was founded in 1928 and has governance of all cricket in
West Bengal, including management of the Bengal team. is Bengal's current first-class captain. In 1934, the
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) organised the
Ranji Trophy but Bengal did not take part in 1934–35. Bengal achieved
first-class status in December 1935 when they played the
Australian tourists. Bengal were captained by
Alec Hosie and the team included
Shute Banerjee. Although the Australian team on that tour was a mixed bag of veterans and fringe players, they easily defeated Bengal by 9 wickets. In January 1936, Bengal joined the Ranji Trophy, playing in the East Zone, and reached the semi-final where they lost to
Madras. In 1936–37, Bengal were runners-up to
Nawanagar. Two years later, in 1938–39, Bengal won the Ranji for the first time when they defeated
Southern Punjab in the final. Throughout this period, Bengal was essentially a
West Bengal team. They were based in
Calcutta and played all their matches at Eden Gardens. The earliest match of note in
Dhaka was in February 1941 when a Bengal Governor's XI played the Bengal Gymkhana at the
Bangabandhu National Stadium, then called the Dacca Stadium. Following
Partition of India in 1947, Bengal was split into West (India) and East (then Pakistan, now Bangladesh). Bengal won their second Ranji Trophy in 1989–90 when they defeated
Delhi in the final. To 2023, In addition to their two titles, Bengal have been runners-up 13 times, most recently in
2022–23, and only
Bombay/Mumbai have appeared in more finals. Having won the
Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in 2011, Bengal won the
Vijay Hazare Trophy in 2012. Playing under the captaincy of
Sourav Ganguly, they defeated
Mumbai in the final at the
Feroz Shah Kotla Ground, Delhi on 12 March 2012. Author
Mihir Bose, writing in 1990, commented that cricket's first secure foothold in India was
Calcutta Cricket Club, founded 1792 and only five years younger than
Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Despite continuing enthusiasm for the sport in Bengal, it is overshadowed by
Mumbai as "the centre for Indian cricket". Bose describes Eden Gardens as "one of the great Test match centres of the world", but he laments the relative lack of Bengali Test players saying that only "a handful" has played Test cricket. ==Home grounds==