The Minor Counties Championship 1901

6 qualification of players for the second-class competition is the same as that for the first-class counties. THE 1901 MINOR COUNTIES CHAMPIONSHIP The Counties Involved Of the fourteen teams that took part in the Championship in 1900, all did so again in 1901 – Bedfordshire , Berkshire , Buckinghamshire , Cambridgeshire , Durham , Glamorgan , Hertfordshire , Norfolk , Northamptonshire , Northumberland , Oxfordshire , Staffordshire , Surrey 2nd XI and Wiltshire . There were three new qualifiers – Devon, Monmouthshire and Yorkshire 2nd XI . Devon were new to the competition. Though not qualifying for the table before, Monmouthshire in 1897, 1898 and 1899, and Yorkshire 2 nd XI in 1900 had played matches that counted as championship fixtures for their opponents. The Championship The 1901 Championship, the first played with the official recognition of the MCC, was won outright by Durham, the only team to remain undefeated throughout the season. Durham had shared the Championship with Glamorgan and Northamptonshire the previous year. If Northamptonshire had beaten Durham when the teams met at Northampton to play their final match in mid-August, then the former would have won the title. As it was, the midland county ended up in fourth place. Surrey 2nd XI were second and Buckinghamshire third. Once again the points system, which was the same as that used in the First-Class County Championship, came under criticism. Wisden commented on Durham’s win “Seeing, however, that they [Durham] won only three out of eight games, their record is really not such a fine one as that of Surrey Second Eleven, who in fourteen games proved successful eight times and were only beaten once ...” Dissatisfaction with the points system was to lead to changes, drawn up under the leadership of Audley Miller of Wiltshire, being adopted at the December 1901 Annual Meeting, details of which will be given in the book for the 1902 season. Whereas 1900 had seen the introduction of the six-ball over and, for two-day matches, the follow-on being made voluntary rather than mandatory and the limit raised from a lead of eighty runs to one hundred, no rule changes were made for the 1901 season. The average runs scored per wicket of 20.01 was little changed compared to the 20.12 of 1900. The highest had been 22.26 in 1899, and the lowest 15.04 in 1895. The proportion of drawn matches reduced to 41%, compared with 52% in 1900 and 48% in 1899, due in significant part to the number of full days’ play lost to the weather declining from ten days in 1900 to four. Leading Performances The outstanding cricketer of the year was George Joseph Thompson of Northamptonshire , who not only became the first bowler to take one hundred wickets in a championship season - 103 at 13.10, - but scored 558 runs at an average of 37.20 and held 13 catches. In the course of 7 days between Friday 26 July and Thursday 1 August, he took 32 wickets in 3 matches against