Sport has always been important in Birmingham, England, from the hundreds of diverse grass-roots sports clubs to internationally famous teams, associations and venues. The city was the first city to have been awarded the title National City of Sport by the Sports Council. Major teams Athletics The Birmingham Athletic Club opened a Gymnasium in King Alfred's Place, in Aug 1865/6, and held their annual display and assault-at-arms in the Town Hall. The first festival of the Birmingham Athletic Club was held in 1868. On 1 March 1880 an association was organised of many of the bicycle clubs, cricket clubs, football clubs, and similar athletic bodies in the town and neighbourhood, under the name of "The Midland Counties Amateurs' Athletic Union." The sport was so popular that in January 1879 the "Midland Athlete" newspaper was first published. Today track and field athletics takes place at the open-air Alexander Stadium on a national and international level. Recent development has seen addition of a High Performance Centre for indoor intense specialist training. The Stadium is also home to Birchfield Harriers, who have contributed towards Britain's National and International Athletics for many years and has produced international athletes such as Denise Lewis, Mark Lewis-Francis and Kelly Sotherton. The National Indoor Arena is Britain's Premier Indoor Athletics stadium and in 2003 hosted the 9th IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics. The city hosted the European Athletic Association's 2007 European Athletics Indoor Championships. Cricket Records from the 19th century suggest that there was a cricket club in existence in Birmingham by 1745, and that a cricket match was being played in Birmingham on the day that the Battle of Culloden was fought in 1746. The earliest cricket match in Birmingham for which a definite record exists took place on Monday 15 July 1751, between "Eleven of the Gentlemen of the Holte Bridgman's Club and Eleven of the Gentlemen of Mr Thomas Bellamy's Club, the most of three innings, for Twenty-Two Guineas", at the cricket ground at Holte Bridgman's Apollo Gardens in Deritend, Aston. Admission was 2 pence. In 1760 a "Society of Cricket Players of Birmingham" advertised in Aris's Birmingham Gazette to challenge any other team within 30 miles of the town to a game for the prize of 20 guineas. The Birmingham and District Cricket League is the oldest cricket league in the world, having been founded in 1888. Cricket was extremely popular in Birmingham