The Windward Islands cricket team is a composite team representing the member associations of the Windward Islands Cricket Board of Control, which itself is a member association of the larger West Indies Cricket Board. The team incorporates players from several small islands in the Lesser Antilles, an island arc in the Caribbean Sea. These countries are Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which, from 1940, made up the British Windward Islands colony (sustained until 1958). Although matches were played in the islands from the late 19th century, a combined team was not formed until the early 1950s, when semi-annual matches against a representative Leeward Islands team commenced. The Windwards played its first match at first-class level in December 1959,