1914 English cricket season
1914 was the twenty-fifth season of County Championship cricket in England. It was terminated at the end of August following the outbreak of the First World War. The last four matches to be played all finished on 2 September and the remaining five scheduled fixtures were cancelled.
Honours
- County Championship – Surrey
- Minor Counties Championship – Staffordshire
- Wisden – Johnny Douglas, Percy Fender, Wally Hardinge, Donald Knight, Sydney Smith
Minor Counties Championship
Essex Second Eleven entered the competition for the first time. The county had, however, had a highly successful second eleven so early as 1902.The Minor Counties Championship was, much more than the first-class competition, ruined by the outbreak of war in August when most of the matches were scheduled to be played. Some teams played as few as two games.
Staffordshire – who were leading the table when the last games were played – were declared as champions.
- Five points were awarded for a win.
- Three points were awarded for "winning" the first innings of a drawn match.
- One point was awarded for "losing" the first innings of a drawn match.
- Matches in which no result was achieved on the first innings were not included in calculating maximum possible points.
- Final placings were decided by calculating the percentage of possible points.
Notable events
- To celebrate the centenary of the Marylebone Cricket Club, a match was played at Lord's on 22, 23 and 24 June between the previous winter's MCC South African team and a representative team from the Rest of England. The game was not a success: champion bowler Barnes did not play for the MCC team, who also had the worst of the pitch and lost by an innings.
- On 31 July against Warwickshire at Edgbaston, Northamptonshire's George Thompson becomes the first fielder to hold three catches off successive balls. – the first three of four wickets in four balls by Sidney Smith.
- In August at Weston-super-Mare in the first cricket week at the ground, Yorkshire's Alonzo Drake – in what would become his second-last first-class game – takes all ten Somerset wickets while bowling just 53 balls. This remains the fewest balls bowled to take all ten wickets, and Drake actually took the ten in just 42 consecutive deliveries – also a record.