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The Minor Counties are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that are not afforded first-class status. The game is administered by the Minor Counties Cricket Association which comes under the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). There are currently twenty teams in minor county cricket: nineteen representing historic counties of England, plus the Wales Minor Counties Cricket Club. Of the thirty-nine historic counties of England, seventeen have a first class county cricket team (the eighteenth first class county is Glamorgan in Wales), nineteen have a minor county team, while Huntingdonshire, Rutland, and Westmorland have neither, due to their small population. The last three counties all have associations with another county; Huntingdonshire with Cambridgeshire, Rutland with Leicestershire and Westmorland with Cumberland. Huntingdonshire is sometimes considered one of the Minor Counties because, even though it has never played within the Minor Counties Championship, it has its own individual Cricket Board and played in the English domestic one-day competition, between the years 1999 and 2003. The Isle of Wight, historically a part of Hampshire but now a county in its own right, also has its own individual Cricket Board and has aspirations to play as a Minor County in the future. ==History== The Minor Counties, ie those not accorded first-class status, formed their own Championship from 1895. In the early years, the results of matches against teams playing insufficient games to qualify for the final table were included in the records of those who did. For example Cambridgeshire played only Norfolk. Five notionally Second Class county clubs – Essex, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Hampshire and Leicestershire – joined the County Championship for the first time (some of them had had periods of being considered first-class before the Championship was constituted as such). Four further Minor Counties have since been granted first-class status – Worcestershire in 1899, Northamptonshire in 1905, Glamorgan in 1921 and Durham in 1992. The second XIs of the first-class counties competed in the Minor Counties Championship from its early days and Lancashire Second XI won the Championship title in 1907. For 10 years before and 15 years after the Second World War, the first-class county second XIs frequently won the Minor Counties title, but after 1959, when the counties set up their own Second Eleven competition, fewer contested the Minor Counties games. Yorkshire Second XI was the last second XI winner of the title in 1971, and Somerset Second XI was the last to compete, withdrawing after the 1987 season. The "true" Minor Counties teams (i.e. not the second XI of a first-class county) were often composed entirely of amateur players, though some had a few professionals as well, especially where there were strong professional leagues locally. An example of a professional who played regular Minor Counties cricket was the England bowler Sydney Barnes. After falling out with Lancashire, he played most of his cricket outside the first-class game with Staffordshire. In early days, Minor County teams supplied some amateur cricketers of note too: the most recent example of a Test cricket player whose main cricket was in the Minor Counties was David Townsend in 1934–35. His county cricket was for Durham, though he played first-class cricket for Oxford University. Traditionally, the Minor Counties played a minimum of eight matches, until recent times of two days duration, and few of them played more than 12 matches. Usually the matches were fairly local, against neighbouring counties, rather than against distant teams, and matches were often played in batches so that amateur players could time their holidays from work to take part in several games over a period of a week or two. When they competed, the first-class county second elevens often played many more games. The championship was decided by the average points gained per game. If the second-placed side had not met the leading team, under Rule 16 a challenge match could be played. The result was sometimes computed into the final championship table but this practice was discontinued in 1954 when Devon complained that they would drop from second to fourth as a result of the Challenge match.〔''Cricketer Winter Annual'' 1954〕 The Minor Counties Championship was substantially reorganised in 1983 when the present two-division regional structure was introduced, along with a one-day knock-out competition. More recently, championship matches have increased to three days. The departure of Somerset Second XI in 1987 led to the introduction of the Wales Minor Counties side; Durham's elevation to first-class status in 1992 saw the arrival of Herefordshire, the first time a side from that county had competed. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Minor counties of English and Welsh cricket」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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