1895 was the sixth 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. It was the first season in which the official definition of

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 ...

was activated, following the 1894 ruling. Surrey won the championship for the fifth time in six years, despite increased competition, as the tournament was expanded from nine to fourteen teams. The points system was changed as the teams played differing numbers of matches and the new system involved division of the number of points gained by the number of matches that had ended in either a win or a loss. Draws were thus completely disregarded, as they gave zero points.

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

was the best of the rookie teams, finishing in fifth place. Another championship made its bow as this season was the first to stage the Minor Counties Championship. The inaugural title was shared by three teams:

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham *County Durham, an English county * Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States *Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

and

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

. In the early part of the season, improved batting conditions and long spells of dry weather enabled much heavier scoring than in previous seasons. There were a number of very large scores up until mid-July, when

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 ...

played his famous innings of 424 for Lancashire against Somerset at Taunton. After that, rain returned and most pitches from 20 July onwards were "sticky wickets", with the result that bowlers dominated the latter part of the season.

Charlie Townsend Charles Lucas Townsend (7 November 1876 – 17 October 1958) was a Gloucestershire cricketer. An all-round cricketer, Townsend was classically stylish, left-handed batsman, who was able to hit well despite his slender build. His off-side strok ...

in particular was able to generate prodigious spin of the ball on these treacherous pitches and took 122 wickets in the last 11 county games. Other established bowlers like Peel, Richardson, Mold and Briggs were very difficult to bat against. At the age of 46 (when the season began),

W. G. Grace William Gilbert Grace (18 July 1848 – 23 October 1915) was an English amateur cricketer who was important in the development of the sport and is widely considered one of its greatest players. He played first-class cricket for a record-equal ...

enjoyed a remarkable career revival and was the leading run-scorer in all first-class matches, averaging over 50. He became the first player ever to score 1,000 runs during the month of May and also the first to reach the career landmark of one hundred first-class centuries.

Honours

- Surrey * Minor Counties Championship -

(''shared title'') *Wisden -

WG Grace William Gilbert Grace (18 July 1848 – 23 October 1915) was an English amateur cricketer who was important in the development of the sport and is widely considered one of its greatest players. He played first-class cricket for a record-equal ...

County Championship

Final table

* ¹ Games completed 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, 1896 *

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 ...

1896

External links

Cricket in England in 1895
{{County Championship seasons 1895 in English cricket

1895 Events January–March * January 5 – Dreyfus affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. * January 12 – The National Trust for Places of Histor ...