Gloucestershire County Cricket Club League in 2000. Cricket probably reached Gloucestershire by the end of the 17th century. It is known that the related sport of "Stow-Ball" "aka" "Stob-Ball" was played in the county during the 16th century. In this game, the bat was called a "stave". See Alice B Gomme : "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland". A game in Gloucester on 22 September 1729 is the earliest definite reference to cricket in the county. From then until the founding of the county club, very little has been found outside parish cricket. In the early 1840s, Dr Henry Grace and his
Amateur status in first-class cricket out of cricket than any genuine professional. In Charles Williams' view, the dictum was very subtly worded because it did not forbid amateurs from making money from cricket "off the field of play". In fairness to Grace, he was a general practitioner who had to pay for a "locum tenens" to run his medical practice while he was playing cricket and he had a reputation for treating his poorer patients without charging a fee. C. B. Fry commented that Grace was the only man who became a doctor of medicine "on account of successful operations on the cricket field". Use