Northern Cape (cricket team)

Northern Cape (formerly Griqualand West) is a first-class cricket team that nominally represents the South African province of Northern Cape in the CSA Provincial Competitions. The team is selected and supported by Northern Cape Cricket and plays its home games at the De Beers Diamond Oval in Kimberley.

At organisational level, Northern Cape Cricket is responsible for the administration and development of cricket in the province and among its primary functions are management and promotion of the Northern Cape team. Originally founded sometime before 1884 as the Kimberley Cricket Club, the organization developed at provincial level as the Griqualand West Cricket Board until 2015 when it was renamed Northern Cape Cricket to comply with a government directive that provincial sporting bodies should have their governance structure aligned with the geo-political structure of the country.

The team was called Kimberley to 1890–91 and Griqualand West to 2014–15. It has been called Northern Cape from the beginning of the 2015–16 season. For the purposes of the SuperSport (now Sunfoil) Series, Griqualand West merged with Free State to form the VKB Knights (originally the Diamond Eagles) from October 2004, but Griqualand West (renamed Northern Cape in 2015) has retained its independent status as a team in the CSA Provincial Competitions.^[1][2][3]