Surrey County Cricket Club
Surrey County Cricket Club is a first-class club in county cricket, one of eighteen in the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Surrey, including areas that now form South London. Teams representing the county are recorded from 1709 onwards; the current club was founded in 1845 and has held first-class status continuously since then. Surrey have played in every top-level domestic cricket competition in England, including every edition of the County Championship.
The club's home ground is The Oval, in the Kennington area of Lambeth in South London. They have been based there continuously since 1845. The club also has an 'out ground' at Woodbridge Road, Guildford, where some home games are played each season.
Surrey's long history includes three major periods of great success. The club was unofficially proclaimed as "Champion County" seven times during the 1850s; it won the title eight times in nine years from 1887 to 1895 ; and won seven consecutive titles from 1952 to 1958. Surrey won 23 of its 28 county matches in 1955, the most wins by any team in the County Championship and a record which can no longer be beaten. Surrey have won the County Championship 22 times outright, a number exceeded only by Yorkshire; their most recent championship win was in 2024.
The club's badge is the Prince of Wales's feathers, used since 1915, as the Prince of Wales owns the land on which The Oval stands. The club's traditional colour is chocolate brown, with players wearing brown caps and helmets, and the club is sometimes known by the nickname 'Brown Caps'.
History
Earliest cricket in the county
is thought to have evolved from bat and ball games, played by children in southeast England during the Middle Ages. The first written record of the sport is from a witness statement by the Guildford resident and former Royal Grammar School pupil, John Derrick. In 1597, Derrick testified in a court case over the disputed enclosure of wasteland in the town that, as a child, "hee and his fellowes did runne and play there at Creckett and other plaies". In 1611, King James I gave to his eldest son, Henry, Prince of Wales, the manors of Kennington and Vauxhall, where the home ground of Surrey – The Oval – is today. To this day, the Prince of Wales's feathers feature on the club's badge.Cricket became well established in Surrey during the 17th century and the earliest village matches took place before the English Civil War. It is believed that the earliest county teams were formed in the aftermath of the Restoration in 1660. The earliest known first-class match in Surrey was Croydon v London at Croydon on 1 July 1707. In 1709, the earliest known inter-county match took place between Kent and Surrey at Dartford Brent with £50 at stake. Surrey would continue to play cricket against other representative teams from that time onwards. Probably its greatest players during the underarm era were the famous bowler Lumpy Stevens and the wicket-keeper/batsman William Yalden, who both belonged to the Chertsey club.
1845–1864
Surrey CCC was founded on the evening of 18 August 1845 at the Horns Tavern in Kennington, South London, where around 100 representatives of various cricket clubs in Surrey agreed a motion put by William Denison "that a Surrey club be now formed". A further meeting at the Tavern on 22 October 1845 formally constituted the club, appointed its officers and began enrolling members. A lease on Kennington Oval, a former market garden, had been obtained from the Duchy of Cornwall – which owned the land – by a Mr Houghton, and the ground's first game had been during the 1845 season. Mr Houghton was of the old Montpelier Cricket Club, 70 members of which formed the nucleus of the new Surrey County club. The Honourable Fred Ponsonby, later the Earl of Bessborough was appointed as the first vice-president.Surrey's inaugural first-class match was against the MCC at The Oval at the end of May 1846. The club's first inter-county match, against Kent, was held at The Oval the following month and Surrey emerged victorious by ten wickets. However, the club did not do well that year, despite the extra public attractions at The Oval of a Walking Match and a Poultry Show. By the start of the 1847 season the club was £70 in debt and there was a motion to close. Ponsonby proposed that 6 life members be created for a fee of £12 each. His motion was duly passed, and the club survived. The threat of construction on The Oval was also successfully dispelled in 1848 thanks to the intervention of Prince Albert.
In 1855, Surrey secured a new 21-year lease on their home ground and the club went on to enjoy an exceptionally successful decade, being "Champion County" seven times from 1850 to 1859 and again in 1864. In 1857, all nine matches played by the county resulted in victory. This was the time of great players like William Caffyn, Julius Caesar, HH Stephenson and Tom Lockyer, and a fine captain in Frederick Miller. An incident in 1862, at the instigation of Edgar Willsher in a match between Surrey and England, led to the introduction of overarm bowling into cricket.
1866–1882
Following a brilliant season in 1864 when the team won eight and drew three of its eleven first-class matches, Surrey went into free-fall in the latter half of the 1860s, owing to the decline of key players Caesar, Stephenson and Mortlock and a puzzling inability to find quality bowlers to support the incomparable James Southerton, whose combination with wicket-keeper Ted Pooley virtually carried the team. Although Southerton broke many bowling records and Harry Jupp developed into the most prolific scorer among professional batsmen, Surrey's record in purely county matches during the seventeen seasons from 1866 to 1882 was 59 victories, 107 losses, two ties and 37 drawn games. The team bottomed out in 1871 when they did not win a single county match for the only time until 2008. Southerton, except in 1872 when fast bowler James Street helped him to win seven of twelve games, had no adequate support in bowling after underarm left-arm spinner George Griffith declined, and except when Richard Humphrey achieved prominence in 1872 the batting depended almost entirely on Jupp. The fielding was also generally below the standard expected of first-class cricket.The appointment of renowned sports administrator Charles Alcock as secretary of the club – a paid position for the first time – in 1872 coincided with an improved performance; however, despite qualification rules being changed so that Southerton played every game for the county Surrey performed poorly in the 1873 season. As mainstays Jupp and Southerton declined from 1875, matters were ameliorated by the discovery of class amateur batsmen in Bunny Lucas, Walter Read and William Game, but apart from 1877 Surrey never won half as many games as they lost and the inadequacy of the bowling on flat Oval pitches was a severe handicap.
Dominance in the early years of the Championship (1883–1899)
In 1880, although the county's record remained bad, Surrey began to make the steps that would return them to the top of the table with the appointment of John Shuter as captain and of Walter Read – established as aclass batsman but previously available only in August – as assistant secretary. The death of Southerton and retirement of other veterans paved the way for new talent in Maurice Read, William Roller, left-arm spinner Edward Barratt and pace bowler Charles Horner to lay a foundation for long-term success in the middle 1880s. With the rapid rise of George Lohmann in 1885, Surrey challenged for the unofficial title of Champion County for the first time in twenty years; then, by winning 32 of 42 matches in 1887, 1888 and 1889, Surrey were first or equal first in the final three years before official County Champions emerged.Surrey then won official County Championship titles in 1890–1892 under John Shuter. After a disappointing season in 1893 when their batting failed on Oval pitches rendered fiery by several dry winters and springs, Kingsmill Key took over and led Surrey to further titles in 1894, 1895 and 1899. Leading players in these years were batsman Bobby Abel and a trio of top bowlers: George Lohmann, Bill Lockwood and Tom Richardson. In 1899, Abel's unbeaten 357 helped Surrey to a mammoth total of 811 against Somerset; only beaten in 2025 by 820 against Durham.
1900–1939
The start of the 20th century brought a decline in Surrey's fortunes, and they won the title only once during the next fifty years, in 1914. At the request of Surrey's captain Lord Dalmeny, the Prince of Wales allowed the use of his feathers on the club badge. The club's most famous player was Jack Hobbs, who began playing for the county in 1905, and he had a notable opening partner till 1914 in Tom Hayward, who scored 3,518 runs in all first-class cricket in 1906, equalled C.B. Fry's record of 13 centuries in a season and, in one six-day period, scored two centuries at Trent Bridge and two more at Leicester. He scored his hundredth hundred at The Oval in 1913. Between the two World Wars, Surrey often had a good side, but it tended to be stronger in batting than in bowling; Hobbs played until 1934 with another good opening partner in Andrew Sandham. Hobbs scored more runs and compiled more centuries in first-class cricket than any other player in the history of the game. In recognition of his contribution to the team, the eponymous Jack Hobbs Gates were inaugurated at The Oval.The side was not completely bereft of quality in the bowling department, however: Alf Gover took 200 wickets in both 1936 and 1937, a fine achievement for a fast bowler on the flat Oval track. The Oval pitches of this period tended to be very good for batting, and many matches were drawn. The club captain for much of this period was the affable and bohemian Percy Fender, whose closest colleague was the England captain of Bodyline fame, Douglas Jardine. In 1938, Surrey played a home match away from The Oval for the first time, at Woodbridge Road in Guildford. After 1939, cricket took a break as the Second World War occupied the nation and The Oval was seized for Government use.