Essex County Cricket Club celebrates 150 years

Essex County Cricket Club will mark its 150th birthday by visiting the grand Georgian building where it was formed.

A service will be held at Chelmsford Cathedral before up to 300 guests head to Shire Hall on Wednesday.

The club was born in 1876 as a result of a meeting chaired at the venue by then-East Essex MP James Round.

It has since produced some of the game's great names, including Sir Alastair Cook, Graham Gooch and Graham Napier.

Museum curator David Pracy said it followed several failed attempts to get a side together, dating back to the late 1840s.

"The obvious location for the new club's headquarters was Chelmsford, the geographical and administrative centre of a large county," he said.

"The original thought was that it would use Fair Field, but the ground was shared with the cattle market and was totally unsuitable for county cricket."

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Essex played in Brentwood, east London and various other grounds across the county before it found a home at the County Ground in June 1925.

The side won its first trophies more than 100 years after being founded, scooping the Benson & Hedges Cup and County Championship in 1979.

That unforgettable summer was followed up by Essex's golden era, which saw the team win 11 titles between 1979 and 1992.

But it was 25 years before Essex won a major title again, topping the 2017 County Championship after winning Division Two the season prior.

The landmark 72-point victory has been branded "astonishing" on the club website.

According to an article in the Chelmsford Chronicle in January 1876, there had been many letters of support for establishing the team.

It reported that "a small but influential meeting of gentlemen who take an interest in cricket" held the meeting, chaired by Round.

He is reported to have said: "There are not perhaps so many cricketers in Essex as there are in some of the home counties.

"But I think that the establishment of a county club would do much to establish cricketing in the county."

Nasser Hussain, Keith Fletcher and Sam Cook are among further illustrious names to have worn the Essex whites.

Fans recall Graham Napier rewriting the record books by hitting 16 sixes in a T20 innings in 2008, smashing his way to 152 not out off just 58 deliveries.

A 20-year-old Sir Alastair scored 214 for Essex against Australia in Chelmsford in 2005.

And crowds were able to witness an iconic performance by Simon Harmer in 2017, taking 14 wickets against Middlesex as Essex charged towards winning the County Championship.

Essex said its members-only anniversary event would begin at 13:30 GMT on Wednesday.

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