Northamptonshire County Cricket Club

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Northamptonshire Cricket Club is one of the 18 major counties which make up the English domestic cricket structure. The team plays the majority of its games at the County Cricket Ground, Northampton, but has used outlier grounds at Peterborough, Kettering, Wellingborough and Finedon in the past. It has also used grounds outside the county, at Luton, Tring and Milton Keynes, for one-day games.

The club is possibly the oldest club in the present-day County Championship, having been formed as early as 1820 but substantially reorganised in 1878. It first came to prominence in the Minor Counties championship during the 1890s, and, between 1900 and 1905, the bowling of George Thompson and William East was much too good for almost all batsmen at that level. The county applied for first-class status in 1904 and was promoted the following year.

Though Thompson and East proved themselves bowlers of high class, feebleness in batting kept the county close to the bottom until Sydney Smith arrived in 1909. After three years in the middle of the table, they made a surprising jump to second in 1912 and fourth in 1913. Thompson, Smith and William "Bumper" Wells were one of the best attacks in county cricket, whilst Smith and Haywood were the county's best batsmen.

Thompson and Smith disappeared after World War I, however, and Northamptonshire were then consistently among the weakest counties, with their batting in particular lacking any class. Even when players of the calibre of Vallance Jupp, Nobby Clark and Fred Bakewell arrived during the 1920s, the county could, due to a complete lack of depth in batting, finished above second last only four times between 1923 and 1948. Matters got even worse when Jupp and Clark aged and Bakewell's career was destroyed by a car accident. The county finished last every year from 1934 to 1938 and went ninety-nine matches from 14 May 1935 to 29 May 1939 without a single County Championship victory.

After the Second World War, Northamptonshire was quicker than many other counties to adapt to a more professional game. After more bad years in the late 1940s, it recruited widely and wisely from other counties and other countries, bringing in the one-time England captain Freddie Brown from Surrey, the Australians Jock Livingston, George Tribe and Jack Manning, and the Cambridge University opening bat and leg-spinner Raman Subba Row. Though the tearaway Ashes-winning fast bowler Frank Tyson was, through injury, rarely able to sustain continuous county cricket, Northamptonshire was among the leading counties in the late 1950s.

Later years have proved more mixed: though the club has had intermittent success in one-day competitions, it has not yet won the Championship. Nonetheless it has produced several famous players qualified for England including the South African-born Allan Lamb who scored three centuries against the mighty 1984 West Indians, Tyson's equally injury-prone successor David Larter, the hard hitting Colin Milburn, whose career was cut tragically short by an eye injury sustained in a car crash, the reliable David Steele and Rob Bailey, the punishing Wayne Larkins, the obdurate Peter Willey and all-rounder David Capel, who found like so many the tag of 'the new Botham' hard to bear.

Several notable overseas players such as Curtly Ambrose, Andre Nel, Kapil Dev and Bishen Bedi have starred for the club, which was particularly formidable as a one day batting outfit in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but silverware remains a rarity through their long history.

The groundsman is David Bates.

Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly has also joined the cricket club in a hope to catch the attention of Indian selectors.

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