The team is currently a member of the Minor Counties Championship Eastern Division and plays in the MCCA Knockout Trophy. Buckinghamshire played List A matches occasionally from 1965 until 2005 but is not classified as a List A team per se.[1]
The club has its administrative headquarters at Little Chalfont and plays its matches around the county at various locations including at Wormsley on the Getty Estate. Until 1979 it played regularly at Ascott Park, the home of the Rothschild family which was prominent in the club's foundation.
A match in October 1730 on Datchet Heath (now known as Datchet Common), outside the village of Datchet near Windsor, is the first reference to cricket in Buckinghamshire. Datchet is nowadays in Berkshire but was historically part of Buckinghamshire.
In September 1740, a team called "Buckinghamshire, Berkshire & Hertfordshire" played two matches against the famous London Cricket Club at Uxbridge and the Artillery Ground. London won the first "with great difficulty" but no post-match report was found of the second.[3]
In 1759, an All-England team that played three matches against the noted Dartford Cricket Club included a wicketkeeper called Gill from Buckinghamshire. The same player almost certainly featured in another All-England team in 1772.[4]
A number of games involving Buckinghamshire teams are mentioned in newspapers of the late 18th century. Unlike neighbouring Berkshire, Buckinghamshire was never considered a first-class county.
Origin of club
The present Buckinghamshire CCC was founded on 15 January 1891 as "Bucks County Cricket Club" with the Rothschild family prominent in its formation. Family member Anthony Gustav de Rothschild even represented the club.
Club history
Buckinghamshire joined the Minor Counties Championship in the competition's second season, 1896. Buckinghamshire declined an invitation to join the first-class County Championship in 1921 because of the lack of first-class facilities in the county. Buckinghamshire has won the Championship outright ten times (1922, 1923, 1925, 1932, 1938, 1952, 1969, 1987, 2009 and 2023) and shared the title in 1899 with Northamptonshire.[2] In 2006, they won the Eastern Division, but lost in the final to Devon.[2] Buckinghamshire has won the MCCA Knockout Trophy once since its inception in 1983,[2] in 1990, defeating Lincolnshire in the final at Lord's[5] The most successful period for the county came under the captaincy of Walter Franklin, who led them to five Championships in the 1920s and 1930s.
The county first played List A cricket in the 1965 Gillette Cup against Middlesex.[6] The county appeared in 32 List A matches from 1965 to 2005, winning eight and losing 24, the majority of which against first-class opponents.[6] The county claimed a first-class scalp once, defeating Somerset in the 1987 NatWest Trophy.[7] Buckinghamshire lost the right to play List A cricket when the Minor counties were excluded from the Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy from the 2006 season onward.[8]
