County Championship


The County Championship is a first-class cricket competition in England and Wales. Established in 1890 and organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board, it is the world's first domestic cricket tournament. The tournament is contested by 18 clubs, representing 17 of the historic counties of England and one from Wales. The reigning champions are Nottinghamshire.
The earliest known inter-county cricket match was played in 1709. Until 1889, the concept of an unofficial county championship existed, whereby various claims would be made by or on behalf of a particular club as the "Champion County", an archaic term which now has the specific meaning of a claimant for the unofficial title prior to 1890. In contrast, the term "County Champions" applies in common parlance to a team that has won the official title. The most usual means of claiming the unofficial title was by popular or press acclaim. In the majority of cases, the claim or proclamation was retrospective, often by cricket writers using reverse analysis via a study of known results. The unofficial title was not proclaimed in every season up to 1889, because in many cases there were not enough matches or there was simply no clear candidate. Having already been badly hit by the Seven Years' War, county cricket ceased altogether during the Napoleonic Wars and there was a period from 1797 to 1824 during which no inter-county matches took place. The concept of the unofficial title has been utilised ad hoc and relied on sufficient interest being shown.
The official County Championship was constituted on 16 December 1889, when secretaries of the major clubs gathered at Lord's to decide the following season's fixtures. Simultaneously, representatives of the eight leading counties met privately to determine how teams would be ranked. The new competition began in the 1890 season and at first involved just the eight leading clubs: Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Sussex and Yorkshire. Subsequently, the championship has been expanded to 18 clubs by the additions at various times of Derbyshire, Durham, Essex, Glamorgan, Hampshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Somerset, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Counties without first-class status compete in the National Counties Cricket Championship.

History

Origin of concept

It is difficult to know when the concept of a county championship originated. While early matches were often between teams named after counties, they were not the club teams the usage would imply today. Rowland Bowen states in his history that the earliest usage of the term "County Championship" occurred in 1837 re a match between Kent and Nottingham Cricket Club which for the purposes of that match was called Nottinghamshire. That may be so re the actual terminology but closer examination of the sources does indicate a much earlier expression of the idea.
The earliest known inter-county match was in 1709 between Kent and Surrey but match results are unknown until the 1720s. The first time a source refers to the superiority of one county is in respect of a match between Edwin Stead's XI from Kent and Sir William Gage's XI from Sussex at Penshurst Park in August 1728. Stead's team won by an unknown margin and the source states that "this was the third time this summer that the Kent men have been too expert for those of Sussex". The following year, Gage's team "turned the scales" and defeated Stead's team, prompting a source to remark that " for some years past has been generally on the Kentish side". In 1730, a newspaper referred to the "Kentish champions".
These statements indicate that inter-county matches had been played for many years previously and that there was keen rivalry with each team seeking ascendancy.

Development of county cricket

Inter-county cricket was popular throughout the 18th century although the best team, such as Kent in the 1740s or Hampshire in the days of the Hambledon Club, was usually acknowledged as such by being matched against an "All England" team. There were a number of contemporary allusions to the best county including some in verse, such as one by a Kent supporter celebrating a victory over Hampshire in terms of " bring down the pride of the Hambledon Club".
Analysis of 18th century matches has identified a number of strong teams who actually or effectively proclaimed their temporal superiority. The most successful county teams were Hampshire, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex. But there was often a crossover between town and county with some strong local clubs tending at times to represent a whole county. Examples are London, which often played against county teams and was in some respects almost a county club in itself; Slindon, which was for a few years in the 1740s effectively representative of Sussex as a county; Dartford, often representative of Kent; and the Hambledon Club, certainly representative of Hampshire and also perhaps of Sussex. Other good county teams in the 18th century were Berkshire, Essex and Middlesex.
Using the same sort of reverse analysis, it is possible to compile a list of the most competitive teams from the recommencement of county cricket in 1825. Rowland Bowen published his ideas about this in the 1960s when he was the editor of the Cricket Quarterly periodical. He began by stating that Sussex was publicly acknowledged as the "best county" in the 1827 season when they played against All England in the roundarm trial matches, although the team's involvement in these matches had more to do with the fact that Sussex was the prime mover in the "roundarm revolution". Kent, which had a celebrated team at the time, has long been acknowledged as a champion county in most seasons of the 1840s but in other years there is no clear-cut contender.

County clubs

The middle years of the 19th century are the period of county club formation. So, when title "claims" were made on behalf of Sussex in 1826 and 1827, it was for the same loose association based on Brighton Cricket Club that had a successful season in 1792. But claims on behalf of Sussex from 1845 were by the Sussex county club, founded in 1839. A similar situation existed with both Kent and Surrey. Nottinghamshire is the only other claimant before the 1860s, starting in 1852, but all of its claims have been made by the county club which was founded in 1841.
As the popularity of organised cricket grew throughout England, more county clubs came into contention and, by the mid-1860s, they included the short-lived Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Lancashire, Middlesex and Yorkshire. At this time and into the 1870s, the press began to advocate some form of league system and various journals and individuals, including W. G. Grace, began publishing their views about who was the champion in a given season. Grace became interested after the Gloucestershire club was founded in 1870, with himself as captain, and laid several claims to the championship during the 1870s. In the 1870s, it became widely accepted that the team with fewest losses should be the champions. Various lists of unofficial champions began to be compiled by the contemporary press and others, but they are not usually in complete agreement.

The unofficial titles

All "titles" claimed before 1864 are strictly unofficial and are based on contemporary claims made by or on behalf of a particular team and recorded at the time; reverse analysis performed by a writer who was trying to establish the best team in a given season by reference to the known fixtures and results. It must be stressed that the purpose of such lists when published has never been to ascribe any kind of ruling but rather to provoke discussion. No real credibility can be attached to such claims except to acknowledge that a team was especially strong over a number of years: e.g., Kent in the 1720s; London in the 1730s; Hampshire in the 1770s and 1780s; Sussex in the 1820s; Kent in the 1840s; and Surrey in the 1850s.
From 1864 to 1889, the county championship title remained unofficial except that the idea was widely promoted by individuals in the contemporary press and that had not happened hitherto apart from occasional points of view. Each journalist tended to have his own ideas about the calculation method and the matches to be included, but there was a certain amount of consensus in the main, generally favouring the team with fewest defeats. The list below gives the champions quoted by the most prominent sources, including W. G. Grace, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, John Lillywhite's Cricketer's Companion, James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual and Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game.
  • 1864 – Surrey
  • 1865 – Nottinghamshire
  • 1866 – Middlesex
  • 1867 – Yorkshire
  • 1868 – Nottinghamshire & Yorkshire
  • 1869 – Nottinghamshire & Yorkshire
  • 1870 – Yorkshire
  • 1871 – Nottinghamshire
  • 1872 – Nottinghamshire
  • 1873 – Gloucestershire & Nottinghamshire
  • 1874 – Gloucestershire
  • 1875 – Nottinghamshire
  • 1876 – Gloucestershire
  • 1877 – Gloucestershire
  • 1878 – undecided
  • 1879 – Lancashire & Nottinghamshire
  • 1880 – Nottinghamshire
  • 1881 – Lancashire
  • 1882 – Lancashire & Nottinghamshire
  • 1883 – Nottinghamshire & Yorkshire
  • 1884 – Nottinghamshire
  • 1885 – Nottinghamshire
  • 1886 – Nottinghamshire
  • 1887 – Surrey
  • 1888 – Surrey
  • 1889 – Lancashire, Nottinghamshire & Surrey
The final tally over these 26 seasons was, therefore, Nottinghamshire ; Gloucestershire ; Surrey ; Yorkshire ; Lancashire ; Middlesex.

Qualification rules

Prior to 1873, it was quite common for players to compete for both their county of birth and county of residence during a single season. Beginning in December 1872, three meetings were convened at which qualification rules were established, with the leading nine counties being represented either in writing or in person. At the last of these sessions, held at the Oval on 9 June 1873, it was decided:
  • "That no cricketer, whether amateur or professional, shall play for more than one county during the same season".
  • "Every cricketer born in one county and residing in another shall be free to choose at the commencement of each season for which of those counties he will play, and shall, during that season, play for the one county only".
  • "A cricketer shall be qualified to play for the county in which he is residing and has resided for the previous two years: or a cricketer may elect to play for the county in which his family home is, so long as it remains open to him as an occasional residence".
  • "That should any question arise as to the residential qualification, the same shall be left to the decision of the Marylebone Cricket Club".