Warwickshire County Cricket Club

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Warwickshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Warwickshire. Its limited overs team is called the Warwickshire Bears.

1 Honours
- 1.1 Second XI honours
2 Earliest cricket
3 Origin of club
4 Club history
5 Famous Warwickshire Players
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Honours

County Championship (6) - 1911, 1951, 1972, 1994, 1995, 2004
Gillette/NatWest/C&G Trophy (5) - 1966, 1968, 1989, 1993, 1995
Sunday/National League (3) - 1980, 1994, 1997
Twenty20 Cup (0) -
Benson & Hedges Cup (2) - 1994, 2002

[edit] Second XI honours

Second XI Championship (2) - 1979, 1996; shared (0) -
Second XI Trophy (1) - 2006
Minor Counties Championship (2) - 1959, 1962; shared (0) -

[edit] Earliest cricket

Cricket may have reached Warwickshire by the end of the 17th century. The Warwickshire & Staffordshire Journal was certainly aware of the sport in 1738 for it carried a report of a London v Mitcham game at the Artillery Ground on 11 August (London won by 1 wicket).

The earliest confirmed reference to cricket in the county is a match announcement in Aris’ Gazette on 15 July 1751.

There was a prominent club in Coventry towards the end of the 18th century which played two well-documented matches against Leicester in 1787 and 1788. Reports of both games are included in Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket by G B Buckley. Leicester won both games by 45 and 28 runs respectively.

[edit] Origin of club

Warwickshire CCC was founded on about 8 April 1882 at a meeting in Coventry.

Warwickshire CCC played its initial first-class match versus Notts at Trent Bridge on 3, 4 & 5 May 1894.

[edit] Club history

The club developed so well that by the time of the first official County Championship in 1890 it was playing some of the top first-class counties such as Surrey and Yorkshire. Warwickshire became first-class themselves in 1894 and surprised the cricket world with wins over Surrey at The Oval and Nottinghamshire. They competed in the County Championship from 1895 but despite being strong in batting, their bowling was, until the arrival of Sam Hargreave and Frank Field in 1899, very weak. From 1900 to 1906 they were strong enough to be in the upper-middle reaches of the table, but the decline of their bowling from 1907 returned them to the lower reaches of the table late in that decade.

Frank Foster, who first played as an amateur left arm pace bowler in 1908 but improved greatly in 1910 as a result of slowing his pace to gain accuracy, still stands as Warwickshire's greatest all-rounder. In 1911 he headed both batting and bowling averages and, along with a fully fit Frank Field, enabled Warwickshire to take the Championship from the "Big Six" for the only time between 1890 and 1935. Foster and Field took between then 238 wickets, but in Wisden nobody doubted that Warwickshire's win was largely caused by an abnormally dry summer, and the following three years saw them return to mid-table although Foster in 1914 displayed all-round form equal to that of 1911.

In 1919, with Foster having had an accident that ended his short career, Warwickshire fell to last on the table. They did not improve a great deal until the 1930s when Bob Wyatt's captaincy and the bowling of Mayer, Paine and Hollies moved them to fourth in 1934, but as Paine rapidly declined, they fell away. When Wyatt left for Worcestershire after World War II, they declined even further despite Hollies' wonderful bowling in 1946 - with no support at all, he took 175 wickets for only 15 each. The acquisition of New Zealand speedster Thomas Pritchard gave Hollies the necessary support and by 1948 they had one of the strongest attacks in county cricket. It was this bowling power, along with effective if not wonderful batting, that gave them the Championship in 1951. However, as with 1911, they fell off rapidly as their batting became unreliable over the rest of the decade. After Hollies' retirement in 1957, there were some very poor seasons (though they came fourth in 1959 due to Mike Smith's superb batting) until Tom Cartwright emerged as a top-class seam bowler in 1962. The county came second in 1964, but did not establish itself at the top until the late 1960s. In 1971 Lance Gibbs' magnificent bowling enabled them to come second, whilst brilliant batting gave them a clear Championship win in 1972.

Yet again, though, a Championship win was followed by a decline and the next twenty years saw the county almost always in the lower half of the table. In 1981 and 1982, with Bob Willis doing nothing for them whilse producing match-winning form for England, they averaged over 45 runs for each wicket they took - still a record. Only under the coaching of Bob Woolmer and captaincy of Dermot Reeve (with their allowed foreign player being one of Brian Lara, Shaun Pollock or Allan Donald) did the team become consistently successful. In 1994 they secured a historic treble, winning the County Championship, Axa Equity & Law League (now National Cricket League) and Benson & Hedges Cup. In that season Lara set the world record for a first-class cricket score of 501 whilst playing for Warwickshire against Durham County Cricket Club; the team total of 810-4 declared in that match is also a club record. In 1995 they won the County Championship again, and also won the C&G Trophy. This was to be the last trophy of Dermot Reeve's captaincy with him stepping down during the 1996 season, Bob Woolmer also having moved on to coach South Africa. 1997 saw them lifting the AXA league trophy once again, but this proved to be a false dawn. Performances for the next few years were poor, including relegation to the second division of the County Championship and National Cricket leagues.

However they have since been promoted in both competitions (though relegated again in the National Cricket League), won the Benson & Hedges Cup in 2002 and strong performances with the bat saw the county reclaim the County Championship in 2004. Warwickshire were once again promoted in the national cricket league, and will play in the top division of both competitions in 2006.

There are proposals to relocate to a new ground, the City Of Birmingham Stadium, a 50,000+ all-seater stadium, part of which would be removed to give space from the cricket pitch. The ground would be shared with Birmingham City FC.

Until the year 2005, the club captain was Nick Knight, the coach was John Inverarity, and the Chief Executive was Dennis Amiss, though all three were stepped down at the end of the season. Heath Streak has been appointed as captain for the 2006 and 2007 seasons, Mark Greatbatch has signed a 3 year coaching contract and Colin Povey has been named as their new Chief Executive. Continuing the recent Warwickshire tradition of employing foreign bowlers Daniel Vettori was signed for the 2006 season.