The earliest county cricket matches took place in the 1740s… hang on, let me do the geographical explanation… countries in the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) are split into small areas known as counties. Because it’s English-English, country and county are pronounced differently: sorry about that. Cricket is a sport played between teams of 11 which has more rules than most parliaments and where a match can last for five days. So:
The earliest cricket matches between teams representing counties date back to the 1740s.. apparently the county of Kent was very successful at that time. There are currently 18 English and Welsh counties playing ‘first class cricket’ (think major league) in the men’s game and 16 teams in the women’s county championship.
Traditionally, a player could only play for the county in which they were born; rules changed in more recent times (well, 1873) to enable people to switch counties between seasons and break the stranglehold that some powerhouse counties might have on the game.