The European Cricket Council held nine indoor tournaments between 1999 and 2008, providing some much needed cricketing action to shorten the dark nights of winter.

While some expected countries were strong in the format given their harsh winters meaning they played a lot indoors, such as Denmark who won the tournament four times, there were a few surprises.

Greece, aka Hellas, proved very adept at the indoors game, reaching the final five times, and won it twice, beating Ireland in 2002 and in the best of the nine finals edging out Denmark by three runs in 2005.

The photos here show their captain George Stogiannos with the trophy and the successful Greek squad.

The tournaments could be lively to say the least with the Greeks very, very competitive and at times highly strung. One incident saw a bat being thrown towards a home team bench, while another saw a fight break out between a team and rival supporters!