Finns welcome 10th ICC European Indoor Championship

Finland will host the 10th ICC European Indoor Championship to be held in Kuortane in February 2008, it has been announced.

This is the first time the Scandinavians will have hosted the European Indoor Championship, which made its debut in Versailles, France back in 1998 when it was won by Portugal, three times winner of the competition and tournament hosts in 2001.

Like Portugal, Denmark have also been crowned European Indoor Champions 3 times (2003, 2004, 2006), and the only other teams to win the competition are Greece (2005, 2002) and the Netherlands (2000).

2006 Champions Denmark

Since it started, 17 ICC European member countries have competed in the competition and the 2008 Championship will include eight teams including Belgium, Denmark, Finland France, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain.

This year’s host, Finland, has only competed in the competition once before at the previous tournament in 2006 held at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, where Denmark was crowned Champion and Finland's final position was a creditable sixth out of the eight competitors. Perhaps more importantly for the competition newcomer was that the team was awarded the ICC Spirit of Cricket Award for great sportsmanship.

Commenting on the decision to award the 2008 Indoor Championship to Finland, ICC European Development Manager Richard Holdsworth said: “This is a great time for cricket in Finland which is growing extremely fast. Their development programmes have reached out to many girls and boys over the last few years, and awarding them their first ICC event will help this expand even more”.

The ICC European Championship will be played at Kuortane from February 8-18 2008. For more details of 2008 schedule and previous winners click 2008 ICC European Indoor Championship Schedule (27 KB)