Derbyshire County Cricket Club

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Derbyshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Derbyshire. Its limited overs team is called the Derbyshire Phantoms.

The club is based at the County Cricket Ground, previously known as the Racecourse Ground, in the city of Derby. Other first-class cricket grounds used in the past have included Chesterfield, Buxton, Heanor, Ilkeston and Burton upon Trent, which is actually in Staffordshire. One-day contests have been played at Darley Dale and Knypersley (also in Staffordshire).

In 2006 the club is in Division Two of both the County Championship and the one day league. The captain is Graeme Welch and the coach is former Zimbabwe captain David Houghton. The overseas players are the Australians Michael Di Venuto and Travis Birt.

1 Honours
- 1.1 Second XI honours
2 Earliest cricket
3 Origin of club
4 Club history
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Honours

County Championship (1) - 1936; shared (0) -
Gillette/NatWest/C&G Trophy (1) - 1981
Sunday/National League (1) - 1990
Twenty20 Cup (0) -
Benson & Hedges Cup (1) - 1993

[edit] Second XI honours

Second XI Championship (0) - ; shared (0) -
Second XI Trophy (0) -
Minor Counties Championship (0) - ; shared (0) -

[edit] Earliest cricket

Cricket may not have reached Derbyshire until the 18th century. The earliest reference to cricket in the county is a match in September 1757 between Wirksworth and Sheffield Cricket Club at Brampton Moor, near Chesterfield.

[edit] Origin of club

The formation of Derbyshire CCC took place on 4 November 1870 at a meeting in the Guildhall, Derby.

Derbyshire CCC played its initial first-class match versus Lancashire CCC at Old Trafford Cricket Ground on 26 & 27 May 1871 and joined the (then unofficial) County Championship.

[edit] Club history

Although the club had some good results in its early seasons, it struggled for the most part and before the 1888 season, following a run of disastrous results, Derbyshire was demoted from first-class status. Derbyshire recovered first-class status in 1894 and rejoined the County Championship in 1895.

Although the county then had a quite strong team due to the bowling of George Davidson, Joseph Hulme and George Porter and the batting of William Storer, William Chatterton and Bagshaw, within three years they had hit rock-bottom, going through 1897 without a win due to their best bowlers losing their powers.

From this point up to 1925, Derbyshire were perennially among the weakest counties, losing every single match in 1920. From 1926, the nucleus of a good team emerged around some doughty batting from Denis Smith, Stan Worthington and George Pope, and the bowling of Pope, his brother Alf, Tom Mitchell and Bill Copson took the team to their one and so far only Championship victory in 1936.

There have been more downs than ups in postwar years. Though runs came regularly from Arnold Hamer, the West Indian Laurie Johnson and captain Donald Carr, the batting remained the weak point right up to the beginning of covered pitches in the 1980s. However, a series of fast bowlers served England as well as Derbyshire. The list began with Copson and continued with Cliff Gladwin, Les Jackson, Harold Rhodes, Alan Ward, Mike Hendrick and, most recently Devon Malcolm.