Home ground: No fixed address MCCAT wins: 3 Captain James Morris Date founded 1895 | MCCC wins: 3 FP Trophy wins: 0 Coach Tom Lambert | |
Official website: Berkshire County Cricket Club League Minor Counties Cricket Championship | ||
Berkshire County Cricket Club is one of twenty minor county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Berkshire.
Contents
The team is currently a member of the Minor Counties Championship Western Division and plays in the MCCA Knockout Trophy. Berkshire played List A matches occasionally until 2005 but is not classified as a List A team per se.
History
According to Rowland Bowen in his Growth and Development of Cricket, the first reference to cricket being played in the county of Berkshire was in 1751. Cricket certainly reached Berkshire much earlier than that for it originated on the Weald in Saxon or Norman times and was definitely being played in Berkshire's neighbouring county of Surrey in 1550.
The first definite mention of cricket in Berkshire relates to the famous all rounder Thomas Waymark who resided at Bray Wick, near Maidenhead in the 1740s, though there are earlier mentions of the game at Eton College. The first definite mention of cricket in Berkshire relates to a team called "Buckinghamshire, Berkshire & Hertfordshire" in September 1740, which played two matches against London Cricket Club at Uxbridge and the Artillery Ground. London won the first "with great difficulty" but no post-match report was found of the second. See H. T. Waghorn: Cricket Scores 1730–73.
By the late 18th century, Berkshire had achieved important match status. Its strength was in the prominent Old Field Club of Bray, near Maidenhead, which had a team representative of Berkshire as a county and was capable of taking on other leading teams of the time. The first time Berkshire is recorded as a county team is in a match against Surrey in June 1769 and the county was top-class from then until August 1795 when, after losing to MCC at Lord's, it abruptly ceased to appear in important matches.
Club origins
The Oldfield Club was effectively a Berkshire county team but it was not formally constituted as a county club. Rowland Bowen's researches discovered evidence of a county organisation by 1841, but it may only have been a loose association of local clubs, as was sometimes the case elsewhere.
Berkshire CCC was founded on 17 March 1895, the same year that the Minor Counties Championship began. It did not compete in the first year of the competition but joined for 1896.
In 1921, Berkshire were offered first-class status and a place in the County Championship, however they declined the invitation because the team felt they lacked adequate facilities.
Current squad
Famous players
The following Berkshire cricketers made an impact on the first-class game, or are notable for other things:
Honours
Grounds
The club has no fixed address and uses several grounds around the county. These are: