Cheltenham Cricket Club is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 amateur cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 club based in Cheltenham

Cheltenham

Cheltenham , also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the South-West region of England. It is the home of the flagship race of British steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup, the main event of the Cheltenham Festival held...

, Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....

 first envisioned in 1891. It played its first game on June 21, 1897 against a picked XI of WG Grace. The club's first team plays in the West of England Premier League

West of England Premier League

The West of England Premier League is the top level of competition for recreational club cricket in the West of England and is a designated ECB Premier League....

 which is an accredited ECB

England and Wales Cricket Board

The England and Wales Cricket Board is the governing body of cricket in England and Wales. It was created on 1 January 1997 combining the roles of the Test and County Cricket Board, the National Cricket Association and the Cricket Council...

 Premier League

ECB Premier Leagues

In 1997 the ECB published "Raising the Standard", the ECB Management Board Blueprint for the Future Playing Structure of cricket. This introduced the concept of ECB Premier Leagues, designed to raise the playing standard of the top tier of club cricket and to bridge the gap between recreational...

, the highest level for recreational club cricket

Club cricket

Club cricket is a mainly amateur, but still formal, form of the sport of cricket, usually involving teams playing in competitions at weekends or in the evening. There is a great deal of variation in game format although the Laws of Cricket are always observed...

 in England and Wales. It has also been a Ladies Hockey Club in 1899, tennis club in 1912 and training area for the armed forces during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. It hosted County Championship

County Championship

The County Championship is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales...

 cricket matches from 1923 until 1937, and junior cricket since 1921.

Cheltenham have won the ECB National Club Cricket Championship

ECB National Club Cricket Championship

The ECB National Club Cricket Championship is a knockout club cricket competition in England. The most successful clubs have been Scarborough Cricket Club from Yorkshire, with five titles and Old Hill Cricket Club from the Metropolitan county of West Midlands , with four.-Winners:ECB National Club...

 twice, in 1970 and 1978, and been the premier league champions on one occasion, in 2004. Prior to the formation of the WEPL, Cheltenham competed in the Western League, winning that league three times in four seasons between 1989 and 1992. The club have also won the Gloucestershire County Knock-out Cup on two occasions.

During the 1920s and 30s, Cheltenham's Victoria Ground

The Victoria Ground, Cheltenham

The Victoria Ground is a cricket ground in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. The first recorded match on the ground was in 1893, when Cheltenham played East Gloucestershire.Gloucestershire played their first first-class match there in 1923 against Glamorgan...

 was a regular venue for first-class

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 matches involving Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire County Cricket Club

Gloucestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Gloucestershire. Its limited overs team is called the Gloucestershire Gladiators....

, but since that time it has only hosted a single first-class fixture, when Gloucestershire played the Indian tourists in 1986. The ground has also hosted a NatWest Trophy match and two ICC Trophy matches.

External links

• Cheltenham Cricket Club - official site
• Cheltenham Cricket Club - Play-Cricket site