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Northamptonshire County Cricket Club
One-day Name:	Northants Steelbacks
Coach:	David Capel
Captain:	David Sales
Overseas Player:	Nicky Boje
Overseas Player:	Lance Klusener
Founded:	1878
Home Ground:	County Cricket Ground
First-class debut:	Hampshire
	- 1905
	- Southampton
Championship Wins:	0
National League Wins:	0
FP Trophy Wins:	2
Official Website:	NCCC

Northamptonshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Northamptonshire. Its limited overs team is called the Northants Steelbacks.

The club plays the majority of its games at the County Cricket Ground, Northampton, but has used outlier grounds at Kettering, Wellingborough and Finedon in the past. It has also used grounds outside the county, at Peterborough (formerly considered part of Northants, but now in Cambridgeshire), Luton, Tring and Milton Keynes, for one-day games.

The club's groundsman is David Bates.

Contents 1 Honours 1.1 Second XI honours 2 Records 3 Earliest cricket 4 Origin of club 5 Club history 6 2007 squad 7 References 8 External sources 9 Further reading

• County Championship (0) - Highest placing 2nd 1912, 1957, 1965, 1976

Division Two (1) - 2000

• Gillette/NatWest/C&G/Friends Provident Trophy (2) - 1976, 1992
• Sunday/National/Pro 40 League (0) - Highest placing 2nd 2006
• Twenty20 Cup (0) - Quarter Finalists 2005, 2006
• Benson & Hedges Cup (1) - 1980

• Minor Counties Championship (2) - 1903, 1904; shared (2) - 1899, 1900

• Second XI Championship (2) - 1960, 1998; shared (0) -
• Second XI Trophy (0) -

Most first-class runs for Northamptonshire Qualification - 20000 runs [1] Player Runs Dennis Brookes 28980 Geoff Cook 20976 John Timms 20433 Wayne Larkins 20317 Rob Bailey 20181 Allan Lamb 20128

Most first-class wickets for Northamptonshire Qualification - 800 wickets [2] Player Wickets Nobby Clark 1102 Vallance Jupp 1078 George Thompson 1078 George Tribe 1021 Albert Thomas 817 Brian Crump 807

Team totals

Highest Total For - 781-7 declared v Nottinghamshire at Northampton 1995

Highest Total Against - 673-8 declared by Yorkshire at Headingley 2003

Lowest Total For - 12 v Gloucestershire at Gloucester 1907

Lowest Total Against - 33 by Lancashire at Northampton 1977

Batting

Highest Score - 331* M.E.K.Hussey v Somerset at Taunton 2003

Most Runs in Season - 2198 D. Brookes in 1952

Most Runs in Career - 28,980 D. Brookes 1934-1959

Best Partnership for each wicket

1st - 375 RA White and MJ Powell v Gloucestershire at Northampton 2002

2nd - 344 G Cook and RJ Boyd-Moss v Lancashire at Northampton 1986

3rd - 393 A Fordham and AJ Lamb v Yorkshire at Leeds 1990

4th - 370 RT Virgin and P Willey v Somerset at Northampton 1976

5th - 401 MB Loye & D Ripley v Glamorgan at Northampton 1998

6th - 376 R Subba Row and A Lightfoot v Surrey at The Oval 1958

7th - 293 DJG Sales and D Ripley v Essex at Northampton 1999

8th - 164 D Ripley and NGB Cook v Lancashire at Manchester 1987

9th - 156 R Subba Row and S Starkie v Lancashire at Northampton 1955

10th - 148 BW Bellamy and JV Murdin v Glamorgan at Northampton 1925

Bowling

Best Bowling - 10-127 VWC Jupp v Kent at Tunbridge Wells 1932

Best Match Bowling - 15-31 GE Tribe v Yorkshire at Northampton 1958

Wickets in Season - 175 GE Tribe in 1955

Wickets in Career - 1097 EW Clark 1922-1947

Cricket had probably reached Northamptonshire by the end of the 17th century and the first two references to cricket in the county are within a few days of each other in 1741. On Monday 10 August, there was a match at Woburn Park between a Bedfordshire XI and a combined Northants and Huntingdonshire XI (see H T Waghorn: Cricket Scores 1730 - 1773). Woburn Cricket Club under the leadership of the Duke of Bedford was on the point of becoming a well known club. On Tuesday 18 August, a match played on the Cow Meadow near Northampton between two teams of amateurs from Northants and Bucks is the earliest known instance of cricket being played in Northamptonshire county.

On 31 July 1878, the official formation of Northants CCC took place at a meeting in the George Hotel, Kettering based on existing organisation that dated back to 1820. The 1820 date if it could be verified would make Northants the oldest club in the present-day County Championship.

The club came to prominence in the Minor Counties Championship during the 1890s and, between 1900 and 1904, the bowling of George Thompson and William East was much too good for almost all batsmen at that level. The county applied for first-class status in 1904 and was promoted the following year when it joined the County Championship.

Northants CCC played its initial first-class match versus Hampshire CCC at Southampton on 18, 19 & 20 May 1905 to make its County Championship debut.

Though Thompson and East proved themselves bowlers of high class, feebleness in batting kept the county close to the bottom until Sydney Smith arrived in 1909. After three years in the middle of the table, they made a surprising jump to second in 1912 and fourth in 1913. Thompson, Smith and William "Bumper" Wells were one of the best attacks in county cricket, whilst Smith and Haywood were the county's best batsmen.

Thompson and Smith disappeared after World War I, however, and Northamptonshire were then consistently among the weakest counties, with their batting in particular lacking any class. Even when players of the calibre of Vallance Jupp, Nobby Clark and Fred Bakewell arrived during the 1920s, the county could, due to a complete lack of depth in batting, finished above second last only four times between 1923 and 1948. Matters got even worse when Jupp and Clark aged and Bakewell's career was destroyed by a car accident. The county finished last every year from 1934 to 1938 and went ninety-nine matches from 14 May 1935 to 29 May 1939 without a single County Championship victory.

After the Second World War, Northamptonshire was quicker than many other counties to adapt to a more professional game. After more bad years in the late 1940s, it recruited widely and wisely from other counties and other countries, bringing in the one-time England captain Freddie Brown from Surrey, the Australians Jock Livingston, George Tribe and Jack Manning, the New Zealander Peter Arnold, and the Cambridge University opening bat and leg-spinner Raman Subba Row. Dennis Brookes was a stalwart batsman for over 20 years. Though the tearaway Ashes-winning fast bowler Frank Tyson was, through injury, rarely able to sustain continuous county cricket, Northamptonshire was among the leading counties in the late 1950s. The club's best wicket-keeper was Keith Andrew who went on tour with England to Australia but did not play in a Test Match there, though he was capped twice in other series.

Later years have proved more mixed: though the club has had intermittent success in one-day competitions, it has not yet won the Championship. The team finished second in each of 1957, 1965 and 1976. Nonetheless it has produced several famous players qualified for England including the South African-born Allan Lamb who scored three centuries against the mighty 1984 West Indians, Tyson's equally injury-prone successor David Larter, the hard hitting Colin Milburn, whose career was cut tragically short by an eye injury sustained in a car crash, the reliable David Steele and Rob Bailey, the punishing Wayne Larkins, the obdurate Peter Willey and all-rounder David Capel.

Several notable overseas players such as Matthew Hayden, Curtly Ambrose, Andre Nel, Kapil Dev, Mike Hussey, Sarfraz Nawaz,Mushtaq Mohammad, Anil Kumble, Dennis Lillee and Bishen Bedi have starred for the club, which was particularly formidable as a one day batting outfit in the late 1970s and early 1980s. More recently Lance Klusener and Monty Panesar have been notable players.

Under the stewardship of big-hitting batsman David Sales, Northants finished 3rd in the one-day league in 2005 and followed this up with 2nd place behind Essex in the newly named 'Pro40' league in 2006. The club have signed several new players over the winter including ex-England spinner Richard Dawson from Yorkshire and South African all rounder Johann Van Der Wath and 2007 promises to be one of the most exciting years seen at the County Ground in recent times.

Northants have recently undergone a badge change for a more modern and updated version. Their Chief executive is Mark Tagg.

The Northamptonshire squad for the 2007 season consists of (this section could change as players are released or signed):

Players with international caps are listed in bold.

Name	Nat	Batting Style	Bowling Style	Notes
Batsmen
Davey Jacobs		RHB		Overseas player
Stephen Peters		RHB
Chris Rogers		LHB	LS	Overseas player
David Sales (c)		RHB	RM
Robert White		RHB	OS
All-rounders
Paul Coverdale		RHB	OS
Andrew Crook		RHB	OS
Lance Klusener		LHB	RFM	Kolpak
Nicky Boje		LHB	SLA	Overseas player
Johan van der Wath		RHB	RF	Overseas player
Graeme White		RHB	SLA
Wicket-keepers
Niall O'Brien		LHB
Riki Wessels		RHB
Bowlers
Jason Brown		RHB	OS
Steven Crook		RHB	RFM
Richard Dawson		RHB	OS
Richard Logan		RHB	RMF
David Lucas		RHB	LMF
Monty Panesar		LHB	SLA
David Wigley		RHB	RFM

• H S Altham, A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914), George Allen & Unwin, 1962
• Derek Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, Aurum, 1999
• Rowland Bowen, Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970
• Roy Webber, The Playfair Book of Cricket Records, Playfair Books, 1951

• Playfair Cricket Annual – various editions
• Wisden Cricketers Almanack – various editions

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