Northumberland County Cricket Club is one of the county

Historic counties of England

The historic counties of England are subdivisions of England established for administration by the Normans and in most cases based on earlier Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and shires...

 clubs which make up the Minor Counties

Minor counties of English cricket

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...

 in the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 domestic cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 structure, representing the historic county of Northumberland

Northumberland

Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...

 and playing in the Minor Counties Championship and the MCCA Knockout Trophy

MCCA Knockout Trophy

The Minor Counties Cricket Association Knockout Cup was started in 1983 as a knockout one-day competition for the Minor Counties in English cricket...

.

The club is based at Osborne Avenue, Jesmond

Osborne Avenue

Osborne Avenue is a cricket ground in Jesmond, Northumberland. It was originally known as the Constabulary Ground. The first cricket match was played there in 1887, though the first recorded match was in 1894, when Northumberland played a minor match against FGH Clayton's XI.In 1897, the ground...

 and also plays matches around the county at Benwell Park and at the South Northumberland CC ground at Gosforth

Gosforth

Gosforth is an area of Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, England, United Kingdom, to the north of the city centre. Gosforth constituted an urban district from 1895 to 1974, when it became part of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne. It has a population of 23,620...

.

The Minor Counties play three-day matches at a level below that of the first-class

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 game. At present, Northumberland competes in the Eastern Division of the Minor Counties Championship. The team is currently captained by Phil Nicholson, who is also a teacher at the Kings School, Tynemouth, where he teaches history and ancient history.

Honours

• Minor Counties Championship (0) - ; shared (0) -
• MCCA Knockout Trophy (1) - 2006

Earliest cricket

Cricket probably reached Northumberland during the 18th century. According to Bowen, the earliest reference to cricket in the county was in 1766.

Origin of club

A county organisation existed in 1834. The present Northumberland CCC was founded in December 1895 and joined the Minor Counties Championship in the second season of the competition, 1896. It has remained there ever since with the exception of 1898, when it did not compete.

Club history

Northumberland has never won the Minor Counties Championship.

Northumberland won the MCCA Knockout Trophy

MCCA Knockout Trophy

The Minor Counties Cricket Association Knockout Cup was started in 1983 as a knockout one-day competition for the Minor Counties in English cricket...

 for the first time in August 2006, beating Dorset in the final.

Famous players

The following Northumberland cricketers made an impact on the first-class

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 game:

• Leslie Townsend
  Leslie Townsend
  Leslie Fletcher Townsend was an English cricketer who played for England between 1929 and 1934, for Derbyshire between 1922 and 1939 and also for Auckland New Zealand between 1934 and 1936....
  
  
• Stan Worthington
  Stan Worthington
  Thomas Stanley "Stan" Worthington, , was a cricketer who played for Derbyshire between 1923 and 1947 and for England between 1930 and 1937. He was an all-rounder scoring over 19000 runs and taking over 600 first class wickets....
  
  
• Eddie Phillipson
  Eddie Phillipson
  William Edward Phillipson was an English first class cricketer who was born in Cheshire. He played for Lancashire for 15 years before becoming a Test cricket umpire.-External links:*...
  
  
• Colin Atkinson
  Colin Atkinson
  Colin Ronald Michael Atkinson CBE - Cricketer, schoolmaster and headmaster of Millfield School....
  
  
• Jack van Geloven
  Jack van Geloven
  Jack van Geloven was an English first-class cricketer, who played three matches for Yorkshire in 1955, and but then joined Leicestershire on special registration for the 1956 season...
  
  
• Norman Graham
  Norman Graham
  John Norman Graham, born at Hexham, Northumberland, on 8 May 1943, was a cricketer who played for Kent during the county's years of success in the late 1960s and early 1970s....
  
  
• Ben Harmison
  Ben Harmison
  Ben William Harmison is an English cricketer who plays first-class cricket for Durham. The former England Under-19 left-handed batsman scored a century on his first-class debut in 2006. He finished the season with 563 runs at an average of 37.53 with 2 hundreds, though both hundreds came in games...
  
  
• Peter Campbell

Further reading

• Rowland Bowen
  Rowland Bowen
  Major Rowland Francis Bowen was a cricket researcher, historian and writer....
  
  , Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970
• G B Buckley, Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket, Cotterell, 1935
• E W Swanton (editor), Barclays World of Cricket, Guild, 1986
• Playfair Cricket Annual
  Playfair Cricket Annual
  Playfair Cricket Annual is a compact annual about cricket that is published in the United Kingdom each April, just before the English cricket season is due to begin. Its main purposes are to review the previous English season and to provide detailed career records and potted biographies of current...
  
   – various editions
• Wisden Cricketers Almanack – various editions