page_title: Kent County Cricket Club
section_title: Early county teams to 1842
hierarchical_section_title: Kent County Cricket Club / History / Early county teams to 1842
caption_attribution_description: English: Print of Fuller Pilch
context_page_description: 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. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Kent teams have played top-class cricket since the early 18th century, and the club has always held first-class status. The current Kent County Cricket Club was formed on 6 December 1870 following the merger of two representative teams. 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.
  The county has won the County Championship seven times, including one shared victory. Four wins came in the period between 1906 and 1913 with the other three coming during the 1970s when Kent also dominated one-day cricket cup competitions. A total of eleven one-day cricket cup victories include eight between 1967 and 1978, with the last trophy won by the club coming in the 2007 Twenty20 Cup.
context_section_description: A newspaper report recorded an 11-a-side match played for a wager of 11 guineas a man, probably at Town Malling, between West Kent and Chatham in 1705, the first properly recorded cricket match in the county. Four years later the earliest known inter-county match took place when a Kent side and one from Surrey played against each other on Dartford Brent. Dartford was an important club in the first half of the 18th century. It came under the patronage of Edwin Stead through the 1720s and its team began to become rather more representative of Kent as a county, often playing against teams from Sussex. There were three Kent v Sussex matches in 1728 and Stead's team won them all. After the third win, a newspaper reported the outcome as "the third time this summer that the Kent men have been too expert for those of Sussex". This proclamation of Kent's superiority is the first time that the concept of a "Champion County" can be seen in the sources and it is augmented by comments made in other newspaper reports in the next two years.
  In July 1739, the strength of Kent as a county team was recognised by the formation for the first time of an All-England team to play against them. Kent won the first All-England match and drew the second. In 1744, the year in which the Laws of Cricket were first published as a code, Kent met All-England four times including the famous encounter on Monday, 18 June at the Artillery Ground which was commemorated in a poem by James Love. Under the 3rd Duke of Dorset and Sir Horatio Mann, Kent continued to field strong teams through the last quarter of the 18th century, and were, along with Surrey, the main challengers to Hampshire whose team was organised by the Hambledon Club. Teams, which were not always wholly representative of the county itself, played numerous inter-county matches through the 1770s and 1780s, mostly against Hampshire and Surrey. Inter-county cricket ceased during the Napoleonic Wars, probably due to a lack of investment, although Kent teams played a few matches and club cricket continued. County matches were not resurrected until 1825 when Kent met Sussex at Brighton's Royal New Ground.
  By the 1830s Kent sides began to dominate English cricket, winning 98 matches during the period and being declared the leading county side for six seasons out of the seven between 1837 and 1843. During this period the formation of county sides was initially focussed on Town Malling Cricket Club, backed by lawyers Thomas Selby and Silas Norton alongside William Harris, 2nd Baron Harris. Selby and Norton recruited "the best batsman in England", Fuller Pilch from Norfolk, to play at Town Malling, maintain the cricket ground and run the connected public house. Alongside other players such as Alfred Mynn, Nicholas Felix, Ned Wenman and William Hillyer, Kent teams selected by Selby played eleven matches at Town Malling between 1836 and 1841. The expense of running county games meant that Town Malling proved too small to support a county club, despite the large attendances that games attracted, and in 1842 Pilch moved to the Beverley club at Canterbury.
caption: Fuller Pilch, who was signed by the Town Malling club
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