County cricket being played in 1709, though an official County Championship was not instituted until 1890. Having already been badly hit by the Seven Years' War, county cricket ceased altogether during the Napoleonic Wars and there was a period from 1797 to 1824 during which no inter-county matches took place. Inter-county cricket was popular throughout the 18th century, although the best team, such as Kent in the 1740s or Hampshire in the days of the famous Hambledon Club, was usually acknowledged as such by being matched against All-England. The most successful county teams were Hampshire, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex. There was,
Derbyshire County Cricket Club in 1951 Derbyshire County Cricket Club in 1951 Derbyshire County Cricket Club in 1951 was the cricket season when the English club Derbyshire had been playing for eighty years. It was their forty-seventh season in the County Championship and they won five matches and lost seven to finish eleventh in the County Championship. Guy Willatt was in his first full year as captain. He had been appointed in the previous year but because of injury was substituted by Pat Vaulkhard for 1950. His appointment ended a period of uncertainty since the end of the Second World War, when apart from Edward Gothard,