Wiltshire County Cricket Club - Earliest Cricket

Earliest Cricket

Cricket probably reached Wiltshire by the end of the 17th century. The earliest known reference to cricket in the county is dated 1769.

John Major points out that "cricket did not spread evenly across whole counties" but had a tendency towards "local adoption". He mentions a match at Stockton, Wiltshire in 1799 which was reported as "an event so novel in the county of Wiltshire". But cricket was being played by then at several other venues in the county: e.g., Calne, Devizes, Marlborough, Salisbury and Westbury.

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