1894 was the fifth season of

County Championship The County Championship (referred to as the LV= Insurance County Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It bec ...

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

in England. The championship culminated in a close battle between Surrey and the 1893 champions

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

. Before the round of 23 August, the two teams were tied on 10 points, with one match left to play and all other teams out of contention. Yorkshire travelled to

Taunton Taunton () is the county town of Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, Taunton Castle, which later became a priory. The Normans built a castle owned by the ...

to play

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

and, after the first day was rained off, Somerset had to bat on a rain-affected pitch.

George Hirst George Herbert Hirst (7 September 1871 – 10 May 1954) was a professional English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 1891 and 1921, with a further appearance in 1929. One of the best all-r ...

took seven for 32 as Somerset were dismissed for 99, but Yorkshire never got the chance to reply as the third day was rained off. Meanwhile, at

Hove Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th c ...

, Surrey's Tom Richardson and Bill Lockwood bowling Sussex out for 44 and 109 to secure victory by an innings and 15 runs, giving Surrey their fourth official title. Although the term had been in common usage for many years, there was no clear understanding of what constituted

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officia ...

. The issue was addressed in a meeting at Lord's in May and the official definition was applied from the beginning of the 1895 season.

Honours

– Surrey *Wisden (''Five Young Batsmen of the Season'') –

Bill Brockwell William Brockwell (21 January 1865 – 1 July 1935) was an English cricketer. Although primarily remembered as a batsman, he began his career as a fast-medium bowler. With George Lohmann, Tom Richardson and William Lockwood carrying all before ...

, Jack Brown,

C B Fry Charles Burgess Fry (25 April 1872 – 7 September 1956) was an English sportsman, teacher, writer, editor and publisher, who is best remembered for his career as a cricketer. John Arlott described him with the words: "Charles Fry could b ...

Tom Hayward Thomas Walter Hayward (29 March 1871 – 19 July 1939) was an English first-class cricketer who played for Surrey and England between the 1890s and the outbreak of World War I. He was primarily an opening batsman, noted especially for the qual ...

Archie MacLaren Archibald Campbell MacLaren (1 December 1871 – 17 November 1944) was an English cricketer who captained the England cricket team at various times between 1898 and 1909. A right-handed batsman, he played 35 Test matches for England, as ...

County Championship

Final table

Points system: * 1 for a win * 0 for a draw, a tie or an abandoned match * -1 for a loss

Most runs in the County Championship

Most wickets in the County Championship

Overall first-class statistics

Leading batsmen

Leading bowlers

References

Annual reviews

* ''James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual'' (Red Lilly), Lillywhite, 1895 *

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

1895

External links

Cricket in England in 1894
{{County Championship seasons 1894 in English cricket

1894 Events January–March * January 4 – A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire. * January 7 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United S ...