Shropshire County Cricket Club is one of twenty
minor county
A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
clubs within the domestic
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 st ...
structure of
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
and
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...
. It represents the
historic county of
Shropshire
Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...
.
The team is a member of the
Minor Counties Championship
The NCCA 3 Day Championship (previously the Minor Counties Cricket Championship) is a season-long competition in England and Wales that is contested by the members of the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), the so-called national cou ...
Western Division and plays in the
MCCA Knockout Trophy. Shropshire played
List A matches occasionally from 1974 until 2005 but is not classified as a List A team ''per se''.
The club plays at
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...
and around the county at
Bridgnorth,
Oswestry,
Shifnal,
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by ...
, and
Whitchurch.
Honours
* Minor Counties Championship (1) - 1973; shared (0) -
* MCCA Knockout Trophy (1) - 2010
Origins
Cricket probably reached Shropshire in the 18th century. The first reference to cricket in the county was in August 1794, when a match was played on
Kingsland then on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, by a 'Shrewsbury Cricket Society'.
[Published under Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. From Introduction.]
A county organisation existed in either 1819 or 1829, according to
Wisden. In the latter year, according to Tony Percival, a club at
Atcham was advertising to play county matches against teams from neighbouring counties but seemingly attracted little interest. The next revival occurred in 1844 when, following a letter from Shrewsbury solicitor G.M. Salt to ''
Bell's Life in London'' asking for teams from neighbouring English counties or Wales to play Shropshire, Worcestershire played two matches both won by Shropshire. In 1862 a 'Shrewsbury Town and County Cricket Club' was announced to have been formed from an amalgamation of two clubs, by 1866 fixtures were being advertised in newspapers as Shropshire County alone.
[ The Shropshire County Club of this creation lasted until November 1905 when it was resolved a 'Gentlemen of Shropshire' club be formed in its place.]
History
The present county club is quite new, having been formed on 28 June 1956 and taking part in the Minor Counties Championship from 1957.[
Shropshire has won the Minor Counties Championship once, in 1973.] This was the first time the county had even finished in the top 10 of the Minor Counties competition.
Shropshire won the MCCA Knockout Trophy, an annual competition that began in 1983, in 2010.
Notable players
The following Shropshire cricketers also made an impact on the first-class game:
* Doug Slade
Douglas Norman Frank Slade (born 24 August 1940) is a former English cricketer who played for Worcestershire and Shropshire.
Slade scored 5275 runs in first-class cricket at an average of 18.06 and took 502 wickets at 23.47 with his slow left-a ...
(former Worcestershire slow left-arm bowler)
* Somachandra de Silva
* Bilal Shafayat (played for Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The trad ...
and Hampshire
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...
)
* Andy Lloyd who played one test match for England
* Ian Payne
Also professional footballer Steve Ogrizovic played cricket for Shropshire.
Grounds
References
External links
Shropshire CCC
Minor Counties Cricket Association Official Site
National Counties cricket
History of Shropshire
Cricket clubs established in 1956
Cricket in Shropshire
1956 establishments in England
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