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Counties in English or Welsh cricket without first class status

The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes under the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). There are currently twenty teams in National Counties cricket: nineteen representing historic counties of England, plus the Wales National County Cricket Club. Of the 39 historic counties of England, 17 have a first class county cricket team (the 18th first class county is Glamorgan in Wales) and 19 participate in the National Counties championship. Since 2021, Cumberland and Westmorland have been represented by Cumbria in the National Counties championship, while the remaining two historic counties, Huntingdonshire and Rutland, have associations with other counties (Huntingdonshire with Cambridgeshire and Rutland with Leicestershire). Despite this, Huntingdonshire has its own Cricket Board, and took part in the English domestic one day competition between 1999 and 2003. The Isle of Wight, historically a part of Hampshire but now a county in its own right, also has its own Cricket Board. In 2020, the Minor Counties were rebranded as the National Counties Cricket Association.

The Minor Counties, i. e. those not afforded first class status, formed their own Championship from 1895. In the early years, the results of matches against teams that did not play enough games to qualify for the final table were included in the records of those who did. For example, Cambridgeshire played only Norfolk. Five notionally Second Class county clubs – Essex, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Hampshire and Leicestershire – joined the County Championship for the first time (some of them had had periods of being considered first class before the Championship was constituted as such). Four further Minor Counties have since been granted first class status – Worcestershire in 1899, Northamptonshire in 1905, Glamorgan in 1921 and Durham in 1992. The Minor Counties Championship was substantially reorganised in 1983 when the present two division regional structure was introduced, along with a one day knock out competition. More recently, championship matches have increased to three days. The departure of Somerset Second XI in 1987 led to the introduction of the Wales Minor Counties side; Durham's elevation to first class status in 1992 saw the arrival of Herefordshire, the first time a side from that county had competed. In 2020, the Minor Counties were renamed as "National Counties", in part because of the negative connotations of the term "Minor". The competition was restructured at the same time.

National Counties Championship – previously a competition in which teams played a minimum of eight two day matches, usually against neighbouring counties, the competition was relaunched in 1983. It is now a three day competition split into two divisions, each with 10 sides. Originally each team played all the others once a season; now six matches are played by each side. Divisional winners play off to decide Champions. NCCA Knockout Trophy – limited overs competition. Straight knockout with final at Lord's.

Teams representing the Minor Counties have featured in first class and List A matches for many years.

The first Minor Counties side played a three day match at Stoke on Trent against the South African cricket team that toured Britain and Ireland in 1912 and that took part in the Triangular Tournament. The first and third days of the match were washed out by rain; the Minor Counties' total of 127 relied heavily on 51 from Norman Riches, later Glamorgan's first first class captain, and the three South African wickets that fell for 22 runs by close of play on the second day were all taken by Durham medium pace bowler Alfred Morris, whose only other first class match was for "An England XI" against the Australians later that summer, when he took seven further wickets for a team composed largely of Test players. Minor Counties' next outing as a first class side was again against the South Africans, this time in 1924, but it was the third match, the 1928 game at Exeter against the West Indies that cemented the fixture in the calendar. After following on, Minor Counties won the match by 42 runs, thanks largely to 154 by Aaron Lockett, a batsman from Staffordshire (and later a first class umpire) and six wickets for Edward Hazelton of Buckinghamshire. After that, a Minor Counties representative side was normally accorded a first class fixture against the touring team, though sometimes the match was downgraded to a two day non first class match. In some cases, the Minor Counties team included uncapped players from first class counties' second elevens or former first class players, though the match venues were always in the "true" minor counties.

The five top Minor Counties sides from the previous season were put into the draw for the first round of the second ever Gillette Cup competition in 1964, alongside seven first class counties. The five, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Durham, Hertfordshire and Wiltshire, were not seeded in any way, and Durham were drawn at home to Hertfordshire, beating them easily, and thereby becoming the first Minor County side in the cup's second round (in which they lost heavily to the eventual winners, Sussex). The Minor County representation in this competition remained at this level until 1983, by which time it had been renamed the NatWest Trophy. In that season, a new structure for the competition was adopted, with all the first class counties taking part in the first round, and the numbers of teams being made up to 32 by the addition of Ireland, Scotland and 13 Minor County sides. The first round was seeded, with all of the non first class teams drawn against a first class county. At no stage in Minor County participation in this competition were first class teams' second elevens considered eligible for qualification for the competition, but more recently minor counties had to compete against "county board" sides composed of non first class cricketers to qualify for the first round, with up to 60 teams involved. The first Minor County to beat a first class county in the Gillette Cup was Durham: in 1973, the county beat Yorkshire at Harrogate by five wickets. In all, 10 Minor Counties sides beat first class opposition up to 2005 (and three other sides, Ireland, Scotland and Holland, also beat first class counties). Minor County involvement in the competition ended after the 2005 season when the Cup changed to a league format for first class counties (plus Ireland and Scotland) only.

When the Benson & Hedges Cup started as the second List A cup competition in England and Wales in 1972, it was organised in a different format from the knock out Gillette Cup. The then 17 first class counties were put into four mini leagues for the first phase of the competition, and to even up the numbers, three additional teams were recruited: a combined Oxford and Cambridge Universities side, and two representative sides from the Minor Counties. For the first four years, the teams were called Minor Counties North and Minor Counties South; from 1976 to 1979, the counties were split longitudinally into Minor Counties East and West. None of these divided representative teams was at all successful: 63 of 64 games were lost and the exception was a no result game involving Minor Counties South. After 1980, as part of the same move that brought Ireland into the Gillette Cup, Scotland joined the Benson & Hedges Cup, cutting the Minor Counties to a single team. Over the next 19 seasons until the format was changed again after the 1998 competition, the Minor Counties won six out of 75 matches, with a further four "no results". Both the Minor Counties' first two victories, in 1980 and 1981, were by the margin of three runs, against Gloucestershire and Hampshire respectively. At no stage did the representative team reach the next phase of the competition, the knock out stage. In 1999, the Benson & Hedges was recast as a "Super Cup" for only the top eight first class teams; another change in format in 2000 saw three leagues of six first class counties set up. This lasted until the competition was abandoned in favour of the new Twenty20 Cup after the 2002 season, and the Minor Counties did not figure in this set up.