Kent County Cricket Club
Kent County Cricket Club: competitions
Kent County Cricket Club: First-Class Cricket Competitions
Logo Tournament Wins YearsKent County Cricket Club: Limited Overs Cricket Competitions
Logo Tournament Wins Years
Royal London One-Day Cup
3
1967, 1974, 2022
Kent County Cricket Club: Twenty20 Cricket Competitions
Logo Tournament Wins YearsKent County Cricket Club: an overview of the English cricket team
The Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class clubs in the local structure of the County Championship of England and Wales. It was founded in 1842. The first teams appeared at the beginning of the previous century. It was finally created in the 70s of the XIX century after the merger of the two main groups. The Kent Spitfires represents Kent in the OD competition.
KKC has won the County Championship grand prize seven times and has never lost the status of a first-class squad. Most home games are played at the St Lawrence Ground (Canterbury), where Canterbury Cricket Week is also held.
Along with the men’s, Kent has a women’s squad, which has won the County Championship a record eight times (the last one in 2019) and raised the main trophy of the Women’s T20 contest three times over its head.
KKC played their first-class debut game on 25-27 August 1842 at White Hart Field in Bromley. The main star of the county at that time was Fuller Pilch, who was called the best batsman in England. However, shortly after his retirement from professional sports, the club faced financial difficulties and organizational problems. It got to the point that the Kent people did not always have the opportunity to put a full-fledged squad on the game, so the West Kent club was created in Maidstone in the late 50s. Their merger a few years later marked the beginning of the modern Kent County Cricket Club.
The club’s affairs began to improve in the mid 70s, when the fourth Lord Harris, who was elected captain and secretary simultaneously, took over its reform. An important milestone was the creation of Tonbridge Nursery for developing young players, which Captain William McCanlis supervised. Amateurs are gradually being replaced by professionals who are laying the foundation for the future success of the Kent club. The team is replenished with such names as Colin Blythe and Arthur Fiedler (bowlers), Punter Humphries and James Seymour (batsmen). Kent won the County Championship in 1906 and then repeated this achievement three more times before the outbreak of the First World War.
From 1919 to 1934, KKC consistently finished the season in the top five and was considered the fastest team in the championship. Nevertheless, Kent could not win any serious prizes at that time. Jerry Chalk became the captain of the team in 1939. He later died on the fronts of World War II, and soon Kent faced a severe shortage of players. In 1950, Colin Cowdrey joined the club. He later became the first player in history to cross the mark of 100 test matches, and then Doug Wright, the only cricketer to make seven hat-tricks. Under the leadership of the first of them, Kent returned to its previous positions, reaching the County Championship final in 1967 and simultaneously winning the Gillette Cup. Since the 70s, the team has been taking one trophy after another, winning a total of ten prizes at various competitions.
Nowadays, the club continues to remain competitive. So, Kent won the T20 Cup for the first time in 2007, beating Gloucestershire in the final. In 2008, the Kent County Cricket Club was transferred from the first division to the second and soon won. However, due to confusion in the ranking, it stayed at this stage for a while. In 2017, it became the first club in the history of England to receive a special invitation to international competitions – Regional Super50 domestic List A.
Kent County Cricket Club: awards
| Awards | Number of wins | Number of finals |
| County Championship | 6 | 12 |
| County Championship Division 2 | 1 | 2 |
| One-Day Cup | 2 | 5 |
| National League | 5 | 4 |
| Benson & Hedges Cup | 3 | 5 |
| Twenty20 Cup | 1 | 1 |
Kent County Cricket Club: records
- Frank Woolley, who played for the Kent County Cricket Club from 1906 to 1938, holds several records at once: the most number of field appearances, the main sum of runs in a career and the major amount of runs in a season. He is also the fifth most effective bowler in Kent’s history.
- Bill Ashdown set a record for the most points in a match, scoring 332 runs against Essex in 1934.
- Tich Freeman is the most effective bowler in the club’s history (3340 wickets).
Kent County Cricket Club: legends of the club
In addition to the already mentioned Colin Cowdrey and Frank Woolley, the list of Kent County Cricket Club legends also includes Les Ames, Derek Underwood and Alan Knott. They all played for the England national cricket team.
Thirty representatives of the club became Wisden Cricketers of the Year (this honor was awarded to Zach Crowley and Darren Stevens in 2021).
