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, nineteen have a minor county team, while Huntingdonshire, Rutland, and Westmorland have neither, due to their small population.
Somerset County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Somerset. The club's limited overs team was formerly the Somerset Sabres, but is now known only as Somerset.
Nicholas Richard Denis Compton is an English former first-class cricketer who played for Middlesex. The grandson of Denis Compton, he represented England in 16 Test matches.
Billy Ashley Godleman is an English first-class cricketer who plays for Derbyshire and is the team captain. He is a left-handed batsman and a right-arm leg-spin bowler. He played for Middlesex and Essex before joining Derbyshire in 2013. Godleman has previously represented the England under-19 team.
Christopher David Whelan is an English first-class cricketer. He is a right-handed batsman and a right-arm medium bowler, who has represented Middlesex and Worcestershire. He came through the ranks at Sefton Park CC, taking a 1st XI hat-trick at Lytham aged 16, and scored a record 177 not out for his school, St Margaret's, in an under-15 final.
Henry William "Harry" Lee was a professional English cricketer who played first-class cricket for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and Middlesex County Cricket Club between 1911 and 1934. He made one Test appearance for England, in 1931. An all-rounder, Lee was a right-handed batsman and bowled both off break and slow-medium pace bowling with his right arm. He scored 1,000 runs in a season on thirteen occasions. Part of the County Championship winning sides in 1920 and 1921, Lee aggregated 20,158 runs and took 401 wickets in first-class cricket.
Thomas John Hearne was an English first-class cricketer who played one match for Middlesex, in which he did not bat or bowl.
Dominick Ignatius Joyce is a former Irish cricketer. A right-handed batsman, he has played 69 times for the Ireland cricket team including three One Day Internationals, six first-class matches and twenty List A matches. He has also played second XI cricket for Middlesex and Somerset.
William Kyle McCallan, MBE, usually known as Kyle McCallan, is a former Irish cricketer. A right-handed batsman and off spin bowler, he has played more times for the Ireland cricket team than any other player, more than 40 caps ahead of the next player in the table, the retired Peter Gillespie. Only three players have captained Ireland more times than McCallan, and only Jason Molins has captained them to more wins. He has also played second XI cricket for Derbyshire and Surrey.
1919 was the 26th season of County Championship cricket in England and the first since 1914. The authorities had doubted if cricket would remain popular after a four-year break and the strain of war. It was decided that County Championship matches should be reduced from three days' duration to two, but cricket had not lost its popularity and the two-day experiment was a failure. Yorkshire finished the season as champions, topping the table by four percentage points. No Test cricket was played but an Australian Imperial Forces team toured England, playing matches from mid-May until mid-September. Andy Ducat, Patsy Hendren, Percy Holmes, Herbert Sutcliffe and Ernest Tyldesley were named in the 1920 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack as the Five Cricketers of the Year for their 1919 performances.
Garfield David Harrison is one of four brothers to have played cricket for Ireland. Garfield was by far the most successful of the four, playing 118 times for Ireland between 1983 and 1997, including twelve first-class matches against Scotland and 20 List A matches.
Thomas Westley is an English professional cricketer who has played test cricket for the England cricket team. He is a top order right-handed batsman who occasionally bowls offbreaks and has played first-class cricket for Essex County Cricket Club since 2006. He began his cricket career at Weston Colville Cricket Club in Cambridgeshire.
Oliver Philip Rayner is an English cricketer. He is a right-arm off break bowler and right-handed batsman who currently plays for Middlesex.
Richard Averill Lloyd known as Dickie Lloyd was an Irish cricketer and rugby union player. At cricket, he was a right-handed batsman and right-arm medium pace bowler who played two first-class matches for the Ireland cricket team, also playing for Lancashire. In rugby union, he was a fly-half who played 19 times for the Ireland national rugby union team, scoring 72 points, and was regarded as one of the best goal kickers of the time. He is rated by his school, Portora Royal School, as one of their most famous pupils, alongside Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde.
Richard Edwardes More was an English cricketer. A right-handed batsman and right-arm medium pace bowler, he played first-class cricket for Oxford University and Middlesex, amongst others, and later played for the Egypt national cricket team while he was working for the Sudan Civil Service.
Sam David Robson is an Australian born English cricketer who plays for Middlesex County Cricket Club. He is a right-handed batsman and occasional legbreak bowler. Born to an Australian father and English mother, Robson played under-19 cricket for Australia but qualified for England in August 2013. In 2012 he became the first batsman to score a first-class hundred in England in the month of March.
David Burton is a first-class cricketer, who has played county cricket for Gloucesteshire, Middlesex and Northamptonshire.
David Eustace Blake was an English amateur cricketer. He was a left-handed batsman who played primarily as an opening batsman and as an occasional wicketkeeper.
Dennis Oliver Baldry is a former English cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a right-arm off break bowler who played as an all-rounder.
Christopher John "Chris" Aworth is a retired cricketer for Surrey and Cambridge University. A left-handed batsman and occasional left-arm spin bowler born in Wimbledon, Aworth played for Surrey's Second XI from 1971 before appearing for Cambridge against the MCC in 1972 and making his first-class debut for them against Warwickshire in 1973. In July 1974 he was selected for Surrey's First XI and debuted against Lancashire. He would play twenty-eight County Championship matches for Surrey, as well as eighteen one day games in the John Player League and Benson and Hedges Cup. He scored 67 in the semi-final of the 1976 Benson & Hedges Cup. For Cambridge he made thirty-one appearances in total. Across his first-class career, he scored 2,552 runs including three centuries. His professional career ended in 1976 with matches against the British Army.
