According to Rowland Bowen in his Growth and Development of Cricket, the first reference to cricket being played in the county of Berkshire was in 1751. Cricket certainly reached Berkshire much earlier than that for it originated on the Weald in Saxon or Norman times and was definitely being played in Berkshire's neighbouring county of Surrey in 1550.
The first definite mention of cricket in Berkshire relates to the famous all rounder Thomas Waymark who resided at Bray Wick, near Maidenhead in the 1740s, though there are earlier mentions of the game at Eton College. The first definite mention of cricket in Berkshire relates to a team called "Buckinghamshire, Berkshire & Hertfordshire" in September 1740, which played two matches against London Cricket Club at Uxbridge and the Artillery Ground. London won the first "with great difficulty" but no post-match report was found of the second. See H. T. Waghorn: Cricket Scores 1730–73.
By the late 18th century, Berkshire had achieved first-class status. Its strength was in the prominent Old Field Club of Bray, near Maidenhead, which had a team representative of Berkshire as a county and was capable of taking on other leading teams of the time. The first time Berkshire is recorded as a county team is in a match against Surrey in June 1769 and the county was top-class from then until August 1795 when, after losing to MCC at Lord's, it abruptly ceased to appear in first-class matches.[citation needed]
Club origins
The Oldfield Club was effectively a Berkshire county team but it was not formally constituted as a county club. Rowland Bowen's researches discovered evidence of a county organisation by 1841, but it may only have been a loose association of local clubs, as was sometimes the case elsewhere.[citation needed]
Berkshire CCC was founded on 17 March 1895, the same year that the Minor Counties Championship began. It did not compete in the first year of the competition but joined for 1896.[citation needed]
Current squad
* denotes the team captain
‡ denotes players who have played first-class cricket.
For cricketers who have played minor counties cricket for Berkshire, and have also played domestic cricket at first-class/List A/Twenty20 level, or are notable in fields outside of cricket, see Category:Berkshire cricketers.
