The Minor Counties Championship 1902

6 Cambridgeshire did not feature on the list. The representative match with the MCC, which had been a feature for the previous four years, was dropped for 1902. The precise reasons are not known, but the fact that the last two matches had been one-sided – in favour of MCC in 1900 and of the Minor Counties in 1901 – may have had some bearing on the decision. Umpires Neutral umpires had first been introduced for the 1901 season as a condition for obtaining the formal recognition of the Championship by the MCC. A meeting of some of the captains and county secretaries was held in the Lord’s pavilion on Monday 9 December 1901 - the day before the Annual Meeting - to select the umpires for the 1902 season. Those present were F E Lacey (Secretary of the MCC and Chairman), H R Orr (Bedfordshire), Capt J J St L Wheble (Berkshire), P J de Paravicini (Buckinghamshire), W H Manfield (Dorset), J H Brain (Glamorgan), C D Fastnedge (Hertfordshire), A J R Butler (Monmouthshire), E G Buxton (Norfolk), T Horton (Northamptonshire), F G H Clayton (Northumberland), Rev P E Mainwaring (Staffordshire), A M Miller (Wiltshire), R W Frank (Yorkshire 2nd XI) and R H Mallett (Hon Secretary). The following 25 umpires were chosen for 1902: R Barber J Gregory R Rogers C E Bartram T Hanson G T Rye D Bookless W Hearne A Stockwin H Briscoe R Humphrey J J Tuck C E Brown A Luff W A Woof T C Brown C Marshall S Wrigley W Cherry J O’Connor J Yeadon W Copeland C Powell H Coulson H J Quinnell Of the 25, there were five newcomers – H Briscoe, C E Brown, T Hanson, J O’Connor and H J Quinnell. The five umpires listed in 1901 and not on the 1902 list were A Buswell, F Gladwin, T Morley, J Rogers and H Shaw. Of these, H Shaw had been promoted to the first-class list. The umpires are not known for 30 of the 72 matches played in the Championship in 1902. H Richardson is the only umpire known to have stood in a match during the season who was not on the 1902 list. THE 1902 MINOR COUNTIES CHAMPIONSHIP The Counties Involved As mentioned earlier, of the 17 teams who had participated in the Championship in 1901, two withdrew before the start of the 1902 season – Cambridgeshire and Norfolk . Dorset were the only newcomers, so the number of Championship teams declined from seventeen to sixteen. Cambridgeshire – The Hon Secretary, Major Oliver Papworth, was not present at either of the 9 or 10 December meetings of the MCCA at Lord’s, and Cambridgeshire’s place on the Emergency Committee was taken by Bedfordshire. The fixture list for the Championship was published on 11 December with no reference to Cambridgeshire. Reports of the MCCA’s