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
Somerset County Cricket Club first-class matches Somerset County Cricket Club first-class matches This article is a summary of 2,698 first-class cricket matches played by Somerset County Cricket Club to the end of the 2017 season. Somerset is generally regarded as a first-class team from 1882 to 1885 and from their entry into the County Championship in 1891. The record is complicated by a number of matches that W G Grace played for Gloucestershire against Somerset between 1879 and 1885. Wisden and Playfair recognise all of these as first-class and they are included in Grace's career figures, which have been his accepted figures since 1916 and are