Lima Cricket Club was founded in 1859 and cricket has been played in Lima, on and off, since then. The club moved to its present site with a cricket ground in Magdalena in the 1920s. The first match against a foreign team by a Peruvian team was against Sir Pelham Warner’s MCC side on its way back from Australia via Chile and Peru in 1927. The former England captain, Freddie Brown, was born in Lima and his father took five wickets against the MCC.

Only internal cricket was played between then and the 60s and, sadly, we have little record of this. Between 1967 and 1980 there was a surge of interest in the game, largely based on workers from British textile firms. As well as intense local competition, tours were arranged to Argentina three times, as well as to Colombia and Venezuela, and there were visits by teams from Argentina, Australia and England, as well as the Derrick Robbins XI, which included future England internationals Bill Athey, Chris Cowdrey and Andy Lloyd.

The 1980s proved to be another quiet time for cricket in Peru but it recovered in the early 90s when the short, vibrant seasons in February and March raised interest and during Easter, 1995, a tournament was arranged in Lima between teams from Chile, Brazil and Peru. Chile won with Peru second and contact was reestablished. The first South American Cricket Championship took place soon after, in December that year, featuring Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru. The Championship has taken place since then, at roughly two-year intervals, in Buenos Aires, Santiago – and Lima in 1999 and 2007 (at Lima Cricket and Football Club and Markham College).

The most recent South American Championship, the 8^th, was held in Brazil for the first time, in April 2009, at the Sao Paulo Athletic Club.

After a promising season in 2006 and following a Twenty20 tournament between four local Lima teams, we made our successful application for Affiliate membership to the ICC (International Cricket Council). This has injected new life and investment into Peruvian cricket. It also means that Peru is now part of a worldwide cricket league system, with the possibility, albeit unlikely, of qualifying for the World Cup. We currently have some way to go to reach that pinnacle as we are in the ICC Americas Division III and ranked 75^th in the world.