Before cricket's County Championship existed, newspapers simply declared a champion county
English counties were playing each other at cricket by 1709, but for nearly two centuries nobody officially kept score of who was best. Champions were crowned by popular acclaim, press opinion or later writers sifting old results. Only in 1890 did the County Championship begin, now the oldest domestic cricket competition in the world.
The earliest known inter-county match, Kent against Surrey, was played in 1709, though no results survive until the 1720s. In August 1728 a report of Edwin Stead's Kent side beating Sir William Gage's Sussex team at Penshurst Park noted it was the third time that summer the Kent men had proved too expert for their rivals. Gage's team turned the tables the next year, and by 1730 a newspaper was already writing of the Kentish champions. Clearly the rivalry was older than the records.
Throughout the 18th century, the strongest county proved itself by taking on an All England side, as Kent did in the 1740s and Hampshire in the era of the Hambledon Club. Hampshire, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex dominated, and the line between town and county often blurred: London almost functioned as a county club, and small places such as Slindon or Dartford at times effectively stood for a whole county. Wars interrupted everything, and from 1797 to 1824, during and after the Napoleonic conflicts, no inter-county matches took place at all.
An unofficial Champion County was named only when there were enough games and a clear standout, often in hindsight by cricket historians. The historian Rowland Bowen dated the first use of the phrase County Championship to an 1837 match between Kent and a Nottingham club playing as Nottinghamshire.
The official competition was born on 16 December 1889, when club secretaries met at Lord's to set the next season's fixtures and the eight leading counties privately agreed a ranking system. The first season, 1890, featured Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Sussex and Yorkshire. Additions over time, including Glamorgan from Wales, have taken the tournament to 18 first-class clubs, run by the England and Wales Cricket Board.
Source: County Championship
