Tunbridge Wells Cricket Week

Last updated

Tunbridge Wells Cricket Week is a festival of cricket during which Kent County Cricket Club play their home matches at Tunbridge Wells Cricket Club's Nevill Ground in Royal Tunbridge Wells. [1] Games held during it are considered some of Kent's most popular fixtures. [2] Historically the event has usually been held in May or June but moved to July in 2015 for the 2015 and 2016 seasons. Following a reorganisation of the English domestic cricket season the week reverted to its more traditional place in the calendar for the 2017 season.

Cricket Team sport played with bats and balls

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a 20-metre (22-yard) pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striking the ball bowled at the wicket with the bat, while the bowling and fielding side tries to prevent this and dismiss each player. Means of dismissal include being bowled, when the ball hits the stumps and dislodges the bails, and by the fielding side catching the ball after it is hit by the bat, but before it hits the ground. When ten players have been dismissed, the innings ends and the teams swap roles. The game is adjudicated by two umpires, aided by a third umpire and match referee in international matches. They communicate with two off-field scorers who record the match's statistical information.

Kent County Cricket Club English cricket club

Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. The club was first founded in 1842 but teams representing the county have played top-class cricket since the early 18th century and the club has always held first-class status. Kent have competed in the County Championship since the official start of the competition in 1890 and have played in every top-level domestic cricket competition in England. The club's limited overs team is called the Kent Spitfires after the Supermarine Spitfire.

Tunbridge Wells Cricket Club are an amateur cricket club in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. They were founded in 1782 and play their home matches at the Nevill Ground. As of 2016 they play in the Kent Cricket League Premier Division.

Contents

History

The cricket week has been running since 1902, with a single Kent match held the previous year at the Nevill Ground. [3] It is currently one of Kent's two outgrounds with all other home matches being played at the St. Lawrence Ground in Canterbury.

Nevill Ground

The Nevill Ground is a cricket ground at Royal Tunbridge Wells in the English county of Kent. It is owned by Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and is used by Tunbridge Wells Cricket Club in the summer months and by Tunbridge Wells Hockey Club in the winter. It was opened in 1898 and was first used by Kent County Cricket Club in 1901. The county has held the Tunbridge Wells Cricket Week on the ground annually, despite a suffragette arson attack which destroyed the pavilion in 1913.

Canterbury Cathedral city in Kent, England

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury, a local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour.

The week has had a poem written about it. [4]

Cricket

A traditional cricket week at The Nevill Ground usually comprised two County Championship games, with occasional limited overs games added to the programme from the 1960s onwards. With the advent of Twenty20 cricket, the one day game was sometimes replaced with a Twenty20 game. In some years Kent have played an extra one day or T20 game during the week. [5] [6] For the 2017 season only a single four-day County Championship game was scheduled for the festival. This was due to the reorganisation of the English domestic cricket season by the England and Wales Cricket Board which led to Kent having to choose which of their two out-grounds to allocate a single one-day fixture to. The county opted to allocate the one-day game to their ground at Beckenham on the south-eastern edge of London rather than to Tunbridge Wells. [7]

County Championship

The County Championship, currently known as the Specsavers County Championship for sponsorship reasons, is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It became an official title in 1890. The competition consists of eighteen clubs named after, and originally representing, historic counties, seventeen from England and one from Wales. From 2016, the Championship has been sponsored by Specsavers, who replaced Liverpool Victoria after 14 years.

Limited overs cricket any of the versions (List A, Twenty20, etc.) of the sport of cricket in which a match is generally completed in one day (unlike test cricket)

Limited overs cricket, also known as one-day cricket, which includes List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is a version of the sport of cricket in which a match is generally completed in one day, whereas Test and first-class matches can take up to five days to complete. The name reflects the rule that in the match each team bowls a set maximum number of overs, usually between 20 and 50, although shorter and longer forms of limited overs cricket have been played.

Twenty20 form of cricket

Twenty20 cricket, sometimes written Twenty-20, and often abbreviated to T20, is a short form of cricket. At the professional level, it was originally introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the inter-county competition in England and Wales. In a Twenty20 game the two teams have a single innings each, which is restricted to a maximum of 20 overs. Together with first-class and List A cricket, Twenty20 is one of the three current forms of cricket recognised by the International Cricket Council (ICC) as being at the highest international or domestic level. A typical Twenty20 game is completed in about three hours, with each innings lasting around 90 minutes and an official 10 minute break between the innings. This is much shorter than previously-existing forms of the game, and is closer to the timespan of other popular team sports. It was introduced to create a fast-paced form of the game which would be attractive to spectators at the ground and viewers on television.

Games during the Tunbridge Wells Festival week are often high-scoring with the pitch at the Nevill Ground sometimes being considered a "batting paradise". [8] This could be seen during the 2010 County Championship game against Nottinghamshire, where 1,242 runs were scored despite the game being hit with rain. [9]

Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club sports club

Nottinghamshire 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 Nottinghamshire. The club's limited overs team is called the Notts Outlaws. The county club was founded in 1841 but Nottinghamshire teams formed by earlier organisations, essentially the old Nottingham Cricket Club, had played top-class cricket since 1771 and the county club has always held first-class status. Nottinghamshire have competed in the County Championship since the official start of the competition in 1890 and have played in every top-level domestic cricket competition in England.

Related Research Articles

St Lawrence Ground

The St Lawrence Ground is a cricket ground in Canterbury, Kent. It is the home ground of Kent County Cricket Club and since 2013 has been known as The Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence, due to commercial sponsorship. It is one of the oldest grounds on which first-class cricket is played, having been in use since 1847, and is the venue for Canterbury Cricket Week, the oldest cricket festival in the world. It is one of the two grounds used regularly for first-class cricket that have had a tree, the St Lawrence Lime, within the boundary.

Linden Park Cricket Club (LPCC) is a cricket club based at Higher Cricket Ground, Fir Tree Road, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.

Crabble Athletic Ground

The Crabble Athletic Ground, also known as The Crabble or simply Crabble, is a football stadium located in the northern Dover suburb of River, Kent. It was the home of the various incarnations of Dover F.C. from 1931 until the club folded in 1983. Since then it has been the home of Dover Athletic F.C., and it was also the temporary home of Margate F.C. between 2002 and 2004, when the club's Hartsdown Park stadium was being redeveloped. The stadium has two seated stands and two covered terraces and holds a total of 5,745 fans, although in the past, crowds larger than that figure could be accommodated. It also has a clubhouse, which the club completely redeveloped in 2008.

County Cricket Ground, Beckenham cricket ground

The County Ground, Beckenham is a cricket ground in Beckenham in the London Borough of Bromley. The ground is owned by Leander Sports and Leisure and is used as an outground by Kent County Cricket Club for First XI fixtures, as well as for other matches. As of 2016 the Kent Women cricket team play the majority of their matches at the ground

Cheriton Road football stadium in Folkestone

Cheriton Road is a complex of sports grounds at Folkestone in the English county of Kent. The complex includes football pitches, a cricket ground, hockey pitches, netball courts and an indoor sports facility. It includes the home ground of Folkestone Invicta F.C., known as The Fullicks Stadium for sponsorship reasons, and the Three Hills Sports Park which includes the home grounds of Folkestone Cricket Club and Folkestone Optimist Hockey Club. The cricket ground, which was previously called the Cheriton Road Sports Ground, was used by Kent County Cricket Club for top level cricket matches.

Old County Ground

The Old County Ground is cricket ground, located at West Malling, historically called Town Malling, in the English county of Kent. It is known to have been used for cricket matches in 1705 and has been the home ground of Town Malling Cricket Club since their formation in 1827. Known under various names throughout its existence, the ground hosted 14 first-class cricket matches between 1836 and 1890.

The Angel Ground was a sports ground at Tonbridge in the English county of Kent. It was used as a venue for first-class cricket by Kent County Cricket Club between 1869 and 1939 and then for association football by Tonbridge Angels F.C., until 1980. It was subsequently demolished and redeveloped by Tonbridge and Malling District Council in 1980.

Canterbury Cricket Week

Canterbury Cricket Week was founded in 1842, although a similar festival week was first held in 1839 by the Beverley Cricket Club, the club which was the foundation for Kent County Cricket Club. It is the oldest cricket festival week in England and involves a series of consecutive Kent home matches, traditionally held in the first week in August. Since 1847 it has taken place at the St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury, before that it was held at the Beverley Ground in the same city. In addition to hosting cricket matches, it also includes several other events and ceremonies. As of 2018, there have been 167 Canterbury Cricket Weeks held. The week continued through the Second World War with cricket being held on the ground each season.

Higher Common Ground

Higher Common Ground is a cricket ground on Tunbridge Wells Common in the town of Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent. It was used as a ground by Kent County Cricket Club in the 19th century and is the home ground of Linden Park Cricket Club.

B. M. Close's Ground was a cricket ground at Southborough in the English county of Kent. The ground was established in 1859 by Robert Winnifrith on land owned by George Newnham and was described in 1862 as "one of the best cricket grounds in Kent". The first recorded match on the ground was in 1859, when a Tunbridge Wells side played a New All-England Eleven. In 1867, Kent County Cricket Club played a county match against Hampshire in the ground's only first-class cricket match.

In 2016, Kent County Cricket Club competed in Division Two of the County Championship, the Royal London One-Day Cup and the NatWest t20 Blast. The season was the fifth, and last, in charge for head coach Jimmy Adams and the first for new club captain Sam Northeast, who took over from Robert Key at the end of the 2015 season, having captained the side on the field for much of the season.

Kent County Cricket Club's 1910 season was the 21st season in which the County competed in the County Championship. Kent played 29 first-class cricket matches during the season, losing only five matches overall, and won their third Championship title. They finished well ahead of second place Surrey in the 1910 County Championship.

In 2017, Kent County Cricket Club competed in Division Two of the County Championship, the Royal London One-Day Cup and the NatWest t20 Blast. In addition, before the start of the English cricket season, Kent competed in the 2016–17 Regional Super50, the List A competition of the West Indian domestic season. This was the first time that any English county had competed in an overseas domestic competition. The invitation to take part in the tournament was largely due to the influence of former West Indian captain Jimmy Adams who had been Kent's Head Coach until September 2016.

In 2011, Kent County Cricket Club competed in Division Two of the County Championship, Group A of the 40-over Clydesdale Bank 40 and the South Group of the Friends Life t20. Kent also hosted a Twenty20 match at the St Lawrence Ground against the touring Indians, and a three-day first-class MCC Universities match against Loughborough MCCU, also at the St Lawrence Ground. It was the second and final season in charge for Director of Cricket Paul Farbrace. The club captain was former England batsman Rob Key who had been club captain since 2006. Pakistan fast bowler Wahab Riaz joined Kent as their overseas player in June, and another fast bowler, South African Charl Langeveldt, signed as Kent's second overseas player for the Friends Life t20 competition only.

In 2018, Kent County Cricket Club competed in Division Two of the County Championship, the Royal London One-Day Cup and the 2018 t20 Blast. The county finished second in Division Two of the Championship and were promoted to Division One for the 2019 season. They reached the final of the One-Day Cup. losing to Hampshire at Lord's, and the quarter-final stage of the t20 Blast. In addition, before the start of the English cricket season, Kent competed in the 2017–18 Regional Super50, the List A competition of the West Indies domestic season, reaching the semi-final stage. This was the second time that Kent have competed in the competition, having played in the 2016–17 competition.

References

  1. ↑ Tunbridge Wells Cricket Week. "Tunbridge Wells Cricket Week". BBC. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
  2. ↑ Gidley, Andrew (2010-06-03). "Tunbridge Wells Festival Week can pull in the crowds for Kent". Kent Messenger. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
  3. ↑ "Tunbridge Wells Cricket Club, cricket, kent, uk". Tunbridge Wells cricket club. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
  4. ↑ Hopps, David (2010-06-04). "County cricket – as it happened". Guardian. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
  5. ↑ "Two Twenty20 fixtures feature at 'special' Tunbridge Wells festival". Your Tunbridge Wells. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
  6. ↑ "Reduction in Twenty20 cricket a major blow to Kent". Your Canterbury. 2011-03-23. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
  7. ↑ 'Honorary Treasurer's Report' in Reports and Accounts (2016), Kent County Cricket Club, 2017, pp.11-14.
  8. ↑ Garrett, Glenn (2011-04-15). "For struggling Kent, a week playing cricket in Tunbridge Wells could be just what the doctor ordered". Thisiskent.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
  9. ↑ "Nottinghamshire meander to draw with Kent". BBC Sport. 2010-06-07. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.