Kent county cricket teams 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. Kent struggled against the prominence of Sussex in the early roundarm years but then enjoyed a glorious period in the middle of the century. Rowland Bowen has recorded that a Maidstone newspaper in 1837 described a match between Kent and Nottinghamshire as for the County Championship. This is the earliest known use of the term although
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