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The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. They are administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes under the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). There are currently twenty teams in National Counties cricket: nineteen representing historic counties of England, plus the Wales National County Cricket Club.
Of the 39 historic counties of England, 17 have a first-class county cricket team (the 18th first-class county is Glamorgan in Wales) and 19 participate in the National Counties championship.
Since 2021, Cumberland and Westmorland have been represented by Cumbria in the National Counties championship, while the remaining two historic counties, Huntingdonshire and Rutland, have associations with other counties (Huntingdonshire with Cambridgeshire and Rutland with Leicestershire). Despite this, Huntingdonshire has its own Cricket Board, and took part in the English domestic one-day competition between 1999 and 2003. The Isle of Wight, historically a part of Hampshire but now a county in its own right, also has its own Cricket Board.
In 2020, the Minor Counties were rebranded as the National Counties Cricket Association.
History
The Minor Counties, i.e. those not afforded first-class status, formed their own Championship from 1895. In the early years, the results of matches against teams that did not play enough games to qualify for the final table were included in the records of those who did. For example, Cambridgeshire played only Norfolk. Five notionally Second Class county clubs – Essex, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Hampshire and Leicestershire – joined the County Championship for the first time (some of them had had periods of being considered first-class before the Championship was constituted as such). Four further Minor Counties have since been granted first-class status – Worcestershire in 1899, Northamptonshire in 1905, Glamorgan in 1921 and Durham in 1992.
The Minor Counties Championship was substantially reorganised in 1983 when the present two-division regional structure was introduced, along with a one-day knock-out competition. More recently, championship matches have increased to three days. The departure of Somerset Second XI in 1987 led to the introduction of the Wales Minor Counties side; Durham's elevation to first-class status in 1992 saw the arrival of Herefordshire, the first time a side from that county had competed.
In 2020, the Minor Counties were renamed as "National Counties", in part because of the negative connotations of the term "Minor". The competition was restructured at the same time.