Talk:County Championship

Comments

If you don't really know cricket, it doesn't tell you if this is test, four-day, one-day matches.

• As far as I am aware, the points system for the County cricket is as follows:

14 pts for a win 7 pts for each team in a tie 4 pts for each team in a draw FIRST INNINGS points are awarded for each team in the first 130 overs of each innings and retained whatever the result of the match: (a)A maximum of five batting points to be available as under: 200 to 249 runs 1 point 250 to 299 runs 2 points 300 to 349 runs 3 points 350 to 399 runs 4 points 400 runs or over 5 points b) A maximum of three bowling points to be available as under: 3 to 5 wickets taken 1 point 6 to 8 wickets taken 2 points 9 to 10 wickets taken 3 points

This is verifed under the cricinfo website on: http://aus.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/2005/ENG_LOCAL/CC1/CC1_TABLE_2005.html

Hope this helps.

• The league tables seem to be rarely updated on this page. Unless anyone has any objections, I will remove the sub-section around the start of the 2007 season and maintain a link to cricinfo's current standings pages Seedybob2, September 17, 2006

• • Actually, we could just link to the wiki article on the current 2006 English cricket season. It's not very well maintained either, but I'll get the tables up next week. Sam Vimes | Address me 10:47, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

• • • Sam - Fair point, but given what you've said - why not wait until each season finishes - then put up a summary of it? You do maintain a fair few pages yourself and seem to be the only one contributing to the tables. You're doing a grand job, but if no-one else is going to assist, I'd suggest you make it easier for yourself Seedybob2 19:20, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Unwatched

For an unwatched competition, I've seen quite a few people at Worcester, Cheltenham and Trent Bridge. Like most people living in the past, Keating is in a cloud cuckoo land. Attendances at Notts have improved in recent yearsFieldgoalunit (talk) 08:41, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Name change

I would like to propose renaming the page to "County Championship (cricket)" to differentiate it from the County Championship (rugby union). JeffreySteer (talk) 10:36, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. Place a hatnote at the top of this article directing readers to your new RU article. The County Championship has always been primarily associated with cricket and so any disambiguation should be from this page: for example, per Cricket. BlackJack | ^{talk page} 14:58, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Oppose name change The County Championship is the primary competition in English cricket, while the English County Championship appears to be below the Premiership (how far below I can't tell) does not seem as notable as the cricket competition. However, a note could be placed at the top of this article mentioning the rugby competition, ie:

For the rugby competition, see English County Championship (rugby union).

. Nev1 (talk) 15:48, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

No change. I don't think there is any question that the cricket County Championship is by far the higher level competition and should keep it's title. As per User:BlackJack's suggestion, placing a disambiguation message at the top of the page would be a good idea. In addition, maybe create the following page: County Championship (disambiguation) which should read exactly as English County Championship currently does.

(aside) County Championship (rugby union) would perhaps be better title for the English County Championship (rugby union) article. --bigissue (talk) 16:00, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Champion County

I've been thinking about the Champion County article and I've come around to the view that lists of unofficial (and invariably disputed) titles should not be included as they are speculative. This applies to all three lists that were in the article: i.e., 1728 to 1795; 1826 to 1863; and 1864 to 1889. I've shifted the content apart from the lists to the history section of County Championship, where I think it is more appropriate anyway, and I've placed a redirect on this article which is now redundant.

Happy to discuss with any member of WP:CRIC who has reservations, as I realise this action is a bit drastic. However, I was the author of the majority of the article and I have made sure that work by others (e.g., the 1873 qualification rules) have been showcased in the CC article. ----Jack | ^{talk page} 10:47, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

It was probably the right thing to do. Both Wisden and Playfair only give Champions from 1890, though at one time Wisden used to give a list from 1864 (I think compiled by Rowland Bowen). JH (talk page) 18:47, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I believe that was Bowen. There are too many instances in the 1870s and 1880s for any consistency. I think Derek Birley had the right approach. ----Jack | ^{talk page} 20:35, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

"Champion County". You may be right to unlist them. It is unclear to me whether the retrospective analysis was sometimes undertaken during that winter, or some were agreed in 1889/1890, or all after 1889. For example, is Rowland Bowen (above) a latterday member of ACSH or one of the 1889/1890 crew? These points make some difference to me. Regarding champions determined by modern statisticians and historians, I agree that you shouldn't simply list them as Champions. Probably I would reproduce the ACSH list as their retrospective list, Wisden's 1890 or 1980 [I have no idea] list as Wisden's list or Bowen's (commissioned for that or engaged as editor of the annual?), and so on. Any such thing may be an appropriate "list" rather than "article" for wikipedia.

Afterthought. If publisher? Wisden or his agent commonly anointed a champion as part of the annual review to accompany the compilation—work done next winter, I suppose—then to me its clear that the list should be in the encyclopedia somewhere. --P64 moments later

Origin of concept. The 1728 shows clearly that the teams were taken to represent counties, not that Kent was taken to be champion county. Another word on the role of Edwin Stead, William Gage, and the Duke of Richmond may be worthwhile. In infer that the Duke of Richmond was a noble governor whose hired team would naturally be considered representative, but Stead and Gage were merely wealthy men. Stead was not the "Count" of his county, in the continental sense, so it was a minor accomplishment to hire a team taken to represent the county. Right? --P64 (talk) 21:36, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Rowland Bowen was active in the 1960s and produced a list of proposed 19th century champions. This list was his opinion only but his intention, per other writers on the subject, was to provoke discussion and to illustrate which were the most competitive teams, rather than to try and ascribe any kind of official status where none had existed. The 18th century list is later still and the same caveat applies. Although there were isolated claims to some form of superiority in the press and even in songs, it was not really till the 1860s that anyone began to think seriously about the concept and not until the 1873 qualification rules that it could be called even quasi-official. It would not be out of order to include on WP a list from 1873 to 1889 as these are widely accepted but, even so, there are still a lot of years in which the "title" has to be shared because the newspapers used different criteria and could not reach agreement, as Derek Birley pointed out, so really we should limit the list (in another article) to the official titles from 1890.

The original source for the 1728 matches indicates that "Kent" claimed superiority over "Sussex" so it was a form of bragging rights. The terminology was different then and they didn't use words like "champion". But the Kent-based team could be seen to be claiming a "title" as such, for want of a better term. In 1729, the situation was reversed and the Sussex-based team claimed the bragging rights.

Richmond's title did not mean as much in the world of Georgian cricket as Richmond's money, which was always the bottom line in those days. Richmond, Stead, Gage and, a little later, the Prince of Wales all got into cricket patronage because they were rich men who liked a wager and could afford to hire the best professional players. Stead's addiction to gambling was probably the death of him. The most famous player then was Thomas Waymark who played for both Richmond and Gage. The teams were not county clubs but they were representative of their patrons' counties in the sense that they seem to have come from a number of parishes in the county and the sources talk in a broad sense about the "men of Kent" or the "men of Sussex". Having said that, it would be wrong to say they gave any official representation or even that they covered the whole county: e.g., Stead was from Maidstone and the strongest Kent club was Dartford, both in West Kent, so I would think his teams included few if any players from East Kent. But this is where county cricket began as later in the century we see Kent teams which did represent the whole county. At this time, the sport was still evolving from village cricket to county cricket and a phrase like "men of Kent" must not be taken too literally, but the fact that bragging rights were claimed on behalf of a county rather than a patron or a village does suggest an origin of the county championship concept: the terminology and the organisation came much later. ----Jack | ^{talk page} 06:14, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! About the title, ok. "Richmond" was not the name of his county, so he was not a paradigm case and I accept that competitive cricket did not develop that way. (The Earl of Shireshire speaks for Shireshire in putting together a team that represents it, however he selects and induces the players to participate.)

the Kent-based team could be seen to be claiming a "title" as such, for want of a better term. In 1729, the situation was reversed and the Sussex-based team claimed the bragging rights.

Who was bragging? The players and the backers, who overlap, I understand. What is the meaning of our sources, the written accounts and discussions? Do the voices expressed in newspapers and diaries suggest that XIs represented anyone else in the counties: players not hired for this match, habitual betters who did not get a wager down, pure spectators or county boosters (if there were such people)?

I don't say this needs development in this article, or primarily in any article on cricket. The history of sport would benefit from some good work on the origins of community representation by sports teams (or jousting champions, boxers, or racehorses, if that is where to find origins). Has good scholarly work been done? In the United States the relationship is official only for schools: scholastic and collegiate teams, and intercollegiate competition has unofficial origins. (I write in ignorance of official intramural competitions that may have been imported from Britain along with boarding schools. Gryffindor v Slytherin at quidditch may be hundreds of years old.) For our professional teams and our amateurs, representation of communities has been unofficial and a status the clubs or their leagues collectively have achieved; thus it is a measure of their success. --P64 (talk) 15:02, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

There are reports of very large crowds attending Georgian cricket matches and they were always raucous and occasionally riotous. I think the gambling side of cricket outweighed any partisanship to one's own county but there are certainly plenty of references which show that the Hambledon/Hampshire supporters, for example, were very much behind their team. ----Jack | ^{talk page} 15:50, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Promotion list and wooden spoon

I wonder if it is worth adding "Also" to the "Promoted" table header in the Promoted and Relegated section. Its well known by cricket followers but perhaps not by others that the Champions of Div 2 are promoted, accompanied by 1/2 others, to Div 1.

A second suggested clarification concerns the wooden spoon. Should there be a note to say that since 2000 this means bottom of Div 2? I don't think that definition is obvious. Does anyone agree or disagree?TSRL (talk) 16:26, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Bonus points system

The bonus points system used in actual matches does not seem to quite square with the system as described in the article. I was at the last day of the Surrey -v- Gloucester game at the Oval yesterday. The scoreboard showed the bonus points at the bootom as usual. However for a substantial part of the morning session, the Gloucester bonus points were shows as

"Bonus points 3 OR +1"

I assume that 'OR' means over rate. The article describes how points can be deducted for poor over rate (and indeed the scoreboard changed to 'OR 0' and later to 'OR -1' as the day progressed). There is no mention as to how points are apparently added for over rate. 86.130.98.251 (talk) 16:49, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Points are deducted if a side's over rate is less than the required minimum. I think the +1 on the scoreboard was indicating that Gloucestershire's over rate at that stage was 1 above the required minimum. I can't remember the details of just what the deductions are, but I imagine that a websearch would throw them up. JH (talk page) 17:16, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

List of teams

Shouldn't we have a list of the teams in the County Championship and when they joined the first-class elite? Might be quite interesting. – PeeJay 11:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Seconding the above, how is it that this article doesn't have a list of the actual clubs that play in it? (Let alone the clubs' home grounds, captains, etc., as with the articles on every other sporting league). I'm almost certain that there was such a list at one point, but I have no idea why it would have been removed. Really peculiar. IgnorantArmies (talk) 12:01, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

I think there was a list several years ago, probably before the list of winners was put in a separate article. Jack | ^{talk page} 16:09, 21 August 2015 (UTC)