The full form of ICC is International Cricket Council. It is the governing body of the cricket playing nations of the world. ICC was founded in the year 1909 as Imperial Cricket Conference. It started its second inning as International Cricket Conference in 1964. It was christened as International Cricket Council in 1989.

ICC is totally devoted to popularizing cricket in more and more countries in the world. Currently, there are 10 test playing nations who are called full members. These countries include Australia, England, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and West Indies. The number of Associate members of the ICC are 32 including Ireland which performed admirably in the 2007 ICC Cricket world cup. The ICC’s efforts to spread the game of cricket to more and more countries have resulted in including 55 countries as its affiliate members. The current head office of the ICC is in Dubai, in United Arab Emirates. Since its inception, the head office was located at Lord’s, England, the Mecca of Cricket.

The ICC oversees the rules and regulations of the game of cricket. The ICC is also responsible for selecting the umpires who officiates the game of cricket world wide. Selection of match referees is also a responsibility of the ICC. The cricket playing nations are divided into regions for the smooth functioning of the cricketing affairs. These regions include Africa, Americas, Asia, East Asia-Pacific, and Europe.

The Committees and Staff of the ICC include ICC Executive, ICC Chief Executives’ Committee, ICC Cricket Committee, ICC Women’s Committee, ICC Audit Committee, ICC Code of Conduct Commission, ICC Management team. ICC also publishes the Rules and Regulations of the game of cricket. The rules and regulations section has the guidelines for the Standard playing conditions for Test matches, One Day Internationals, Twenty 20 Internationals, and ICC Code of Conduct for players or officials.

The ICC has been successfully conducting the cricket world cup since 1975 including the latest edition of 2007 ICC World Cup held in the West Indies. ICC is also responsible for conducting premier tournaments such as ICC Trophy, ICC Champions Trophy, ICC Under-19 World Cup, ICC Intercontinental Cup etc. ICC has a tie up with sponsors LG to publish Team and individual player rankings. ICC also has instituted annual awards for the top performers of the year. Categories include awards for the team of the year, Player of the year, Test Player of the year, ODI player of the year, Emerging Player Award, Captain of the year, Umpire of the year, Women’s player of the year etc. The panel of judges is taken from a cross section of the cricketing world comprising of players, officials, and legendary cricketers and experts.