The 1911 County Championship was the twenty-second officially organised running of the

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 ...

, and ran from 4 May to 5 September 1911.

Warwickshire County Cricket Club Warwickshire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Warwickshire. Its T20 team is called the Birmingham Bears. Founde ...

won their first championship title.

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_ ...

finished bottom of the table, winning only one match all season. Tom Hayward topping the batting charts, scoring 1,963 runs for

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

at an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

of 50.33, though

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 ...

scored his 1,299 runs at a far superior average of 76.41.

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

's Harry Dean took the most wickets, accumulating 175 at an

of 17.52. The championship adopted a new method of scoring points, which was proposed by Somerset. Previously the only way to score points was by winning a match, but the new method introduced points for draws. A winning team scored five points, a team which drew a match, but scored more runs in the first innings scored three points, and a team which drew a match, but scored less runs in the first innings scored one point. In his editorial in the ''

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 ...

'',

Sydney Pardon Sydney Herbert Pardon (23 September 1855 – 20 November 1925) was a sports journalist who was the editor of ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'' for 35 editions, from 1891 until his death. His father was the journalist George Frederick Pardon. He t ...

notes that had any of the previous scoring methods been used,

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

would have won the championship, rather than Warwickshire. In their book ''A History of Cricket'', Harry Altham and

E. W. Swanton Ernest William Swanton (11 February 1907 – 22 January 2000) was an English journalist and author, chiefly known for being a cricket writer and commentator under his initials, E. W. Swanton. He worked as a sports journalist for ''The Daily T ...

describe the Kent team as being "possibly a finer all-round side" than Warwickshire, but heap praise on Warwickshire's batting, and their young captain, Frank Foster. Pardon was complimentary of the cricket played during the season, and described that cricket "generally flourished". However, he also observed that a number of counties were in financially difficulty, an issue that Lord Cobham attributed partially to the wages of professional players.

Table

* Five points were awarded for a win. * Three points were awarded for "winning" the first innings of a drawn match. * One point was awarded for "losing" the first innings of a drawn match. * Final placings were decided by calculating the percentage of possible points.

Records

References

{{English cricket seasons 1911 in English cricket County Championship seasons

County A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...