Established in 1852, the Singapore Cricket Club (SCC) is one of the oldest and well known clubs in the region.
Cricket was played on the Padang as early as 1837, only 18 years after Sir Stamford Raffles founded the settlement of Singapore in 1819, but it was not until 1852 that the first meetings were called to discuss the formal establishment of a cricket club. There have been no fewer than three clubhouse buildings on the Padang, the first erected some time in the 1860s, the second in 1877. The third pavilion, which forms the core of the present clubhouse building, was built in 1884. It was extended in 1907, and the northern and southern wings that we see today were added in 1922.
Between 1959 and the early 1970s, numerous cricket teams of Test or first class standard visited Singapore and graced the Padang. The most notable of these were:
• The Australian Test team to India and Pakistan in 1959
• The MCC team to New Zealand in 1961
• Ron Roberts’ Commonwealth XI in 1962
• E.W. Swanton’s Commonwealth XI in 1964
• Joe Lister’s International XI in 1968
• The MCC XI on its East African and East Asian tour in 1970
• The Indian and Pakistan Test teams returning from their tours of Australia in 1968 and 1972
In more recent times, before Twenty20 had even been thought of, SCC hosted a series of cricket 6-a-side tournaments between 1993-1995. These tournaments mixed club players with some the game’s all-time greats, including Dennis Lillee, Joel Garner, Gordon Greenidge, Clive Rice and Alvin Kallicharran. The Sri Lankan team included a young Sanath Jayasuirya, who gave us a glimpse of what was to come. He obviously took a liking to the Padang and in 1996 on the same ground, scored the then fastest ever ODI hundred, in 48 balls against Pakistan.
Cricket has continued to grow in popularity in Singapore and today, SCC fields seven league and one social team, with approximately 150 active cricketers in the club.
Touring is also at the heart of the Club, with section and team tours becoming regular fixtures on the cricketing calendar. Interports to our reciprocal clubs around the region such as the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, Penang Sports Club, Royal Selangor Club, Hong Kong Cricket Club and Kowloon Cricket Club, are still integral to our season.
The club also highly valued relationships with key clubs in UK, Australia, India, Sri Lanka and beyond. In 2013 alone, SCC had very successful tours to both Melbourne and England, to coincide with the Ashes.
The section works hard to nurture these important relationships and we see the SCC International Twenty20 Tournament as a key instrument to further develop these friendships.
The 2014 Singapore Cricket Club Twenty20 Team is sponsored by: