Kent county cricket teams the concept of a Champion County was much older. Kent was duly proclaimed "Champion County" in 1837 and through most of the 1840s. Mainstays of the Kent team in those years included Alfred Mynn, Fuller Pilch, Nicholas Wanostrocht "aka" "Felix", Ned Wenman and William Hillyer. On 6 August 1842, formation of the original Kent County Cricket Club took place in Canterbury. The new club played its initial first-class match against All-England at White Hart Field in Bromley on 25–27 August 1842. On 1 March 1859 a second county club was established in Maidstone to support the Canterbury club. The two
Kent County Cricket Club 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