Worcestershire County Cricket Club was formed officially at The Star Hotel, Worcester, on the 4th March 1865. The list of those attending the meeting reads like Burke's Peerage. The Club has in its possession the account book for that first year of the Club's life. The expenditure is ruled off at the end of the year with a cost of £13 2s/8d. The first entry for the following year (1866) is interesting; it refers to "hire of horse and man, two days rolling - 16 shillings".
There had in fact been clubs representing Worcestershire on the cricket field prior to 1865. In the 1840’s a Worcestershire team played a Shropshire team at Hartlebury Common - and were beaten, and at around the same time XXII of Worcestershire played William Clarke's All-England XI at Powick Hams.
Somewhere in the 1850’s a team representing the City of Worcester and another cricket team, which represented the County, decided to combine and it was to be a broad-based club. Their intention was to attract the men from the shops and from the factory floors to join the Club to play alongside the gentry. A Minute from that time refers to the "5 shilling members being allowed to play with the bat and ball on two nights a week and to play with the half guinea members one night a week."
During the period from its official formation in 1865 the County Cricket Club undertook a number of fixtures but few of them we would recognise today as being major county matches. The team was playing Malvern College, Bromsgrove School, Cotswold, Magpies, Burton-on-Trent, Breconshire, Herefordshire etc., etc. Towards the end of the century there became associated with the County a man by the name of Paul Foley. He was from a family of iron masters in Stourbridge, and he also owned an agricultural estate at Stoke Edith in Herefordshire (the estate is still run by one of his successors).
Paul Foley clearly had great ambition for the County and he established, with others, the Minor Counties Championship which Worcestershire then promptly won in 1895 (tieing with Norfolk), 1896, 1897 and 1898. So emboldened, the County applied for first-class status. This meant it had to gain fixtures against six of the other first-class Counties. These fixtures were arranged, although Sussex required a guarantee for their away match with Worcestershire as well as for their home match!. The County at that time was playing its home matches at Boughton Park.
Paul Foley felt that with first-class status a new ground was required and so he rented from the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral three sheep fields, and he brought from Berkshire a young (23 year old) groundsman by the name of Fred Hunt, who had previously played six County matches for Kent. It was Fred Hunt who turned the sheep pasture into the world renowned and attractive cricket ground, which we now know as New Road.
The Pavilion was built for the start of the 1899 season and as Worcestershire took the field for its first-ever County match against Yorkshire, starting on the 4th May 1899, Paul Foley, in brown bowler hat and brown boots, was seen painting the sight-screen completing the finishing touches for the match to start.
Important to Worcestershire’s success in those days was the presence of the Foster Family in the team. Seven sons of the Rev’d Harry Foster, House Master at Malvern College, all played for the County at various times. H.K. was the first-ever captain of the County and his was an immense contribution. His partnership with Paul Foley was very decisive in the establishment of Worcestershire as a first-class County. His brother, R.E.(“Tip”) was perhaps the most gifted of the brotherhood. Tip captained England (as an amateur) at both soccer and cricket. It was a golden age for batting and the Fosters were all illustrious batsmen. More information on the family can be found at http://www.thefostersofmalvern.co.uk
The early years for Worcestershire were something of a struggle as the County sought to establish itself as a first-class County and its only success (or near success) came in 1907 when the County came second in the County Championship.
The 1912 season was deplorable in terms of results with the County winning only one of its Championship matches and although its cricket fortunes improved in the following season it was during the 1913 season that the Club’s finances plummeted. There was a move, for financial reasons, to wind-up the Club in the middle of the season and only a public appeal headed by Lord Cobham, Lord Dudley, Lord Plymouth and Judge Amphlett headed off that potential early demise of the County. The investigation of the Club’s financial health indicated that the Club had lost money in every year since it had gained first-class status. It became apparent also that Paul Foley, for many of those years, had underwritten the loss himself.
The Pavilion at the County Ground is thus the original one and seen today looks little different from the Pavilion used in 1899. Originally there was a veranda at the front which was glazed in (in 1964) to provide additional accommodation.
Originally the scorers were housed in the clock tower and this meant them going to their eerie by ladder at the beginning and end of each session of play. Later the press photographers took over this spot. The two principal dressing rooms were under the main gables at either end of the Pavilion, (one of them remaining the Visitors Dressing Room today). In these dressing rooms the amateurs changed, whilst the professionals (of both teams) changed in a tin shed. This continued until around the time of the ending of the Second World War when, often, there were only two or three amateurs changing in a large dressing room and countless professionals cramped in to a corrugated iron hut.
As well as its most attractive appearance, the Club is well known for its annual flooding. In the Pavilion, at bar level, there is a brass plaque which records the highest ever recorded flood, in 1947. However, the Ground floods during most winters and a “normal” flood reaches the top step of the Pavilion and the players dressing rooms. As one walks around the Ground there are various points of interest to take in. In the midst of the chestnut trees (alongside the spot where the Pavilion Marquee is sited during the summer months) there is a smaller tree. This is a Black Pear tree and it is appropriate that, as the Club has three Black Pears as its crest, there should be Black Pear trees at the Ground. The Black Pear trees are reasonably rare, and this particular tree marks the County’s first-ever winning of the County Championship in 1964. In view of its age other Black Pear trees have been planted around the Ground in recent years so that the tradition of the Club having the tree, which forms its crest, can continue. The pears in fact are not black but are dark red and taste very bitter and so, it is alleged, taste better when poached in red wine.
The copper beech tree on the Cathedral side of the Ground was planted to commemorate Don Kenyon, his magnificent career, and his contribution to the County’s first winning of the Championship in 1964, a feat which was repeated again in the Club’s centenary year 1965. Nearby is a tree planted to mark the contribution that Phil Neale made, in later years, as County Captain when the Club won six titles in five seasons.
Contained within the Cricket Suite (the Members’ Dining Room) are the Perks Room and the Foster Room, the latter commemorating the brotherhood who played for the County in its early years, and the former commemorating Reg Perks, one of the “golden local heroes” of Worcestershire cricket. These two rooms formed the Club’s offices until 1988. The increased demand for dining accommodation meant that the Club gutted the offices and new offices were formed by building on top of the flat roofed building at the turnstile end of the Ground which previously housed the Press Box and Supporters’ Association office.
A new Press Box was built in the 1980’s within the New Road Stand which itself had been re-built in 1974, with the brick exterior wall replacing what had been tatty metal hoardings. The stand was roofed and, as a result, enabled a suite of hospitality boxes to be built over the stand in readiness for the 1992 season.
Over the years many of the improvements made at the Ground have been funded by the generosity of the Supporters’ Association, which also helped the Club very considerably in 1976 when the Club negotiated with the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral to obtain the freehold of the County Ground.
The County has won the County Championship on five occasions (1964, 1965, 1974, 1988 and 1989), the Sunday League on three occasions (1971, 1987 and 1988), the Refuge Assurance Cup in 1991 and the Natwest Pro40 League in 2007. Since the introduction of one-day Cup Finals at Lord’s (the first was the Gillette Cup Final in 1963 in which Worcestershire played and Norman Gifford was Man of the Match) the County has been to Lord’s for twelve Cup Finals and has won the NatWest Trophy (in 1994) having earlier won the Benson and Hedges Cup (1991).
Among the first-class Counties Worcestershire could be regarded as one of the smallest, if one thinks in terms of the population it serves and the geographical area it serves. However, ever since the visionary Paul Foley obtained first-class status for the County the Club has been determined to regard itself as one of the major cricketing Counties, and its results in recent years give some indication of its success in upholding that vision. In addition to names previously mentioned the Club’s renowned cricketing status can be seen from the names of others who have graced the County’s cricket such as Tom Graveney, Ian Botham, Graham Dilley, Dick Howarth, Roly Jenkins, Jack Flavell, Len Coldwell, Kapil Dev, Glenn Turner, Tim Curtis, the one and only Basil D’Oliveira, Tom Moody, Graeme Hick, Glenn McGrath, Andy Bichel and Zaheer Khan.
Until 2007, success had been hard to achieve since the NatWest Trophy win in 1994. The Club’s first ever Director of Cricket, Tom Moody, was responsible for bringing back the good days. To help achieve this, four new players were signed up for 2002 - Ben Smith from Leicestershire, Gareth Batty from Surrey, Stephen Peters from Essex and Matt Mason from Perth. Some success followed including runners-up in the National Cricket League in 2002, promotion for the first time to the first division of the Frizzell County Championship in 2003 and two successive C&G Trophy finals at Lord's in 2003 and 2004. In 2005, Tom Moody was appointed National Coach for Sri Lanka and county stalwart, Steve Rhodes, was appointed Director of Cricket in his place. In 2006 the club gained a 'double' promotion to secure first division status in both the League competitions for the first time in its history. The NatWest Trophy was secured in 2007 and was the first major title in 13 years.
The summer of 2007 will go down as one of the most challenging ever faced in the history of the Club. The whole region suffered two major floods during the summer which bought devastation to the area. The first flood arrived on 25th June just two days before the start of the popular and lucrative Twenty20 Cup competition. Just as the clear up from this flood had been completed, the second flood arrived on the 21st July. It was the first time the ground had ever flooded in July and was the second deepest flood of the 136 ever experienced at the ground since 1899. The consequences of the two floods were so devastating that no cricket was played at New Road after 21st June and losses of around £800k were accrued. The NatWest Trophy was won without the team playing a single game at home.
Off the field the Club appointed its first Chief Executive in 2001 in recognition of the need to develop a modern business to cope with the ever-increasing financial demands of a professional sports team. In the 2004 season a new stand called the Basil D’Oliveira Stand was constructed at the Diglis End of the ground and there are plans to re-develop the entire Members’ Pavilion, New Road Stand and Severn Bridge Site to ensure the County Ground retains its reputation as one of the best appointed and most loved grounds in the world.
In recent years the Club has had to improve its commerciality in order to remain competitive with the Test Match Grounds and has become a popular venue for rock and pop concerts. In 2003 the pop group Blue appeared at the ground in front of 14,000 young fans and the following year the Club attracted Atomic Kitten and Busted on the same bill followed by Petula Clark the following evening. In 2006 a crowd of over 17,000 (establishing a ground record attendance) enjoyed an outstanding two and a half hour performance from Sir Elton John on a gloriously warm June evening at New Road and it is hoped that similarly high calibre artistes will be attracted to the ground
