Friends Provident Trophy

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Friends Provident Trophy
Trophy in 2009, held aloft by Sean Ervine and Imran Tahir of Hampshire CCC
Countries England
AdministratorEngland and Wales Cricket Board
FormatList A cricket
First edition1963
Latest edition2009
Number of teams20
Current championHampshire
Most successfulLancashire (7 titles)

The Friends Provident Trophy was a one-day cricket competition in the United Kingdom.

It was one of the four tournaments in which the eighteen first-class counties competed each season. They were joined by teams from Scotland and Ireland. Lancashire won the title a record seven times.

The competition was previously known as the Gillette Cup (1963–1980), the NatWest Trophy (1981–2000), and the C&G Trophy (2000–2006). For a short period following the 2006 season, the competition was known as the ECB One-Day Trophy because no sponsors were forthcoming when Cheltenham and Gloucester decided to end their association with the competition after the 2006 season. The tournament, along with the Pro40 forty-overs competition, was replaced by the ECB 40 competition from the 2010 season.

History[edit]

It was the first top-level one-day competition to be introduced in English and Welsh cricket, amid concern about falling attendances at County Championship matches in the early 1960s.

The competition was based on the Midlands Counties Knockout Cup experiment of 1962, when Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire played one-innings-a-side matches which each lasted one day. The MCC decided to hold a limited-overs competition (65 overs-a-side) the following year for all first-class counties, sponsored by American safety razor company Gillette. The original title was "The First Class Knock Out Competition for the Gillette Cup".[1]

The first match (which was also retrospectively identified as the first List A cricket match after that designation was developed), was a Preliminary Round match on 1 May 1963 at Old Trafford, Manchester with Lancashire facing Leicestershire. The match ended up lasting two days due to rain. Peter Marner scored the first century and Brian Statham was the first bowler to take 5 wickets in a match.

Sussex were the first winners of the Gillette Cup, beating Worcestershire in the final at Lord's. Norman Gifford was the very first "Man of the Match" for a final.

Knock-out competition[edit]

In the inaugural season the matches were 65 overs per side, with a bowler bowling a maximum of 15 overs. In 1964, this was reduced to 60 overs with a bowler bowling a maximum of 13. For the 1966 competition until 1998, the maximum was 12.

Minor Counties teams first competed in the 1964 season. The competition has been seen as a cricketing version of football's FA Cup (it being said that "the B&H was always the League Cup final to the Gillette/NatWest's FA Cup"),[2] with Minor Counties, Ireland and Scotland playing against the First Class Counties in the first round. Most times the established teams beat the part-timers but very occasionally there was some "giant killing". Between 1963 and 2005 there were 15 "upsets", including: Durham (at that time still a minor county) being the first in 1973 v Yorkshire; Hertfordshire being successful on two occasions, beating Essex in 1976, and winning a bowl-out versus Derbyshire in 1991; and Herefordshire overcoming a Middlesex side featuring Andrew Strauss in 2001.[3] However, the majority of the time it was an opportunity for county sides to score very high scores against or bowl out cheaply Minor Counties opposition.

One of the most famous matches in the competition was the 1971 Gillette Cup semi final at Old Trafford, with David Hughes of Lancashire coming out to bat at 8.45 pm (before any floodlights) and scoring 24 in one over to beat Gloucestershire. That Lancashire team won the tournament three seasons in a row from 1970 to 1972.

In June 1973, Durham became the first minor county to defeat a first-class county in the competition, when they beat Yorkshire by six wickets in round one. They then became the first minor county to defeat two first class counties, when they defeated Derbyshire at the same stage in 1985. This was the catalyst for the successful campaign that saw Durham gain first-class status in 1991.

The 1987 NatWest Trophy final between Northants and Nottinghamshire at Lord's

In 1981, the National Westminster Bank took over the sponsorship of the competition from Gillette. That year's final finished in a tie, with both sides scored 235.[needs copy edit] Derbyshire claiming the trophy from Northamptonshire by losing fewer wickets (Derbyshire 6 to Northants 9).

Other last ball finishes in the final occurred in 1984 when Middlesex beat Kent, in 1985 when Essex beat Nottinghamshire,[4] and in 1993 when Warwickshire beat Sussex. There was a notable finish too in 1987 when Nottinghamshire's unlikely victory over Northamptonshire was engineered by Richard Hadlee in his last season with the county.

The tournament was always the more prestigious of the two "full length" one day cup competitions. The other was the Benson & Hedges Cup, which was abolished in 2002 and replaced with the Twenty20 Cup. At a time when county cricketers' exposure on television was limited, the final of the Gillette Cup/NatWest Bank Trophy was a relatively high-profile opportunity for some to make a case for national selection, especially as it often fell in early September, just before the announcement of an England winter tour party. Thus strong performances by Roland Butcher in the 1980 final,[5] and Geoff Cook in 1981, may have assisted their subsequent selection and Test debuts. The strong performances of then young cricketers Angus Fraser and Mark Ramprakash for Middlesex in 1988 certainly raised their profiles.[6] Conversely surprise was expressed in 1990 when Phillip DeFreitas was initially overlooked for selection for the winter Ashes series, it being suggested at the time that he "surely booked his place on England's winter tour of Australia with an astonishing eight-over opening burst, which reduced Northants to an unbelievable 39 for five" in the final.[7]

Other notable individual performances included a brisk out-of-character century by Geoff Boycott in the 1965 final, and the domination of the 1979 final by the West Indies pair Viv Richards and Joel Garner, who helped Somerset to their first major trophy a few months after helping West Indies to win the World Cup, also at Lord's.[8] Another West Indies international, Alvin Kallicharran, completed the first double century in the tournament in 1984, in a tie in which he remarkably also took six wickets.[9]

The necessity of aiming to complete a scheduled 120 overs in a day (130 when the tournament began) necessitated some early starts. End of season early-morning conditions by the time of the final often favoured the team fielding first, who usually triumphed in the 1980s and 1990s. A rare exception occurred in 1996, when Lancashire bowlers Glen Chapple and Peter Martin triggered a remarkable collapse by Essex.[10]

In 1999 the number of overs was cut to 50 per side to give English and Welsh cricketers more experience of playing matches the same length as One Day Internationals. In line with One Day International cricket, teams played in coloured clothing from 2005.

League from 2006[edit]

The competition was revised into a league format from 2006. The eighteen English and Welsh first-class sides, plus Scotland and Ireland, were split into two groups of ten by geographical location known as the North and South Conferences. Matches were 50 overs per side, gaining two points for a win, one point for a no result and no points for a loss. Once the league positions were decided, the top teams from each Conference competed for the trophy in a final at Lord's. In the 2007 season this involved a semi-final knock-out stage, the winner in each conference playing the runners-up in the other.

Friends Provident Trophy match in 2009 at the Recreation Ground, Bath: Somerset v Middlesex

The league structure was revised in 2008 as the twenty teams were split into four groups of five. Each team plays the other in the group home once and away once, with the top 2 counties in the group going into the quarter-finals.[11]

The competition was played in the first half of the cricket season with the final taking place in August. The other main domestic one-day competition, the Natwest Pro40 League (formerly "Sunday League"), was latterly played during the second half of the season.

In August 2009, the ECB announced that from 2010 there would be one 40-overs per innings tournament replacing both the Pro40 and the Friends Provident Trophy. This along with the English County Championship and the Friends Provident t20 (a revised form of the Twenty20 Cup), would be English cricket's three domestic competitions.[12]

Final results[edit]

Gillette Cup

Year Final
Winner Result Runner-up
1963
Details
65 overs max
Sussex
168 (60.2 overs)
Sussex won by 14 runs [1] Worcestershire
154 (63.2 overs)
1964
Details
60 overs max
Sussex
131 for 2 (41.2 overs)
Sussex won by 8 wickets [2] Warwickshire
127 (48 overs)
1965
Details
60 overs max
Yorkshire
317 for 4 (60 overs)
Yorkshire won by 175 runs [3] Surrey
142 (40.4 overs)
1966
Details
60 overs max
Warwickshire
159 for 5 (56.4 overs)
Warwickshire won by 5 wickets [4] Worcestershire
155 for 8 (60 overs)
1967
Details
60 overs max
Kent
193 (59.4 overs)
Kent won by 32 runs [5] Somerset
161 (54.5 overs)
1968
Details
60 overs max
Warwickshire
215 for 6 (57 overs)
Warwickshire won by 4 wickets [6] Sussex
214 for 7 (60 overs)
1969
Details
60 overs max
Yorkshire
219 for 8 (60 overs)
Yorkshire won by 69 runs [7] Derbyshire
150 (54.4 overs)
1970
Details
60 overs max
Lancashire
185 for 4 (55.1 overs)
Lancashire won by 6 wickets [8] Sussex
184 for 9 (60 overs)
1971
Details
60 overs max
Lancashire
224 for 7 (60 overs)
Lancashire won by 24 runs [9] Kent
200 (56.2 overs)
1972
Details
60 overs max
Lancashire
235 for 6 (56.4 overs)
Lancashire won by 4 wickets [10] Warwickshire
234 for 9 (60 overs)
1973
Details
60 overs max
Gloucestershire
248 for 8 (60 overs)
Gloucestershire won by 40 runs [11] Sussex
208 (56.5 overs)
1974
Details
60 overs max
Kent
122 for 6 (46.5 overs)
Kent won by 4 wickets [12] Lancashire
118 (60 overs)
1975
Details
60 overs max
Lancashire
182 for 3 (57 overs)
Lancashire won by 7 wickets [13] Middlesex
180 for 8 (60 overs)
1976
Details
60 overs max
Northamptonshire
199 for 6 (58.1 overs)
Northamptonshire won by 4 wickets [14] Lancashire
195 for 7 (60 overs)
1977
Details
60 overs max
Middlesex
178 for 5 (55.4 overs)
Middlesex won by 5 wickets [15] Glamorgan
177 for 9 (60 overs)
1978
Details
60 overs max
Sussex
211 for 5 (53.1 overs)
Sussex won by 5 wickets [16] Somerset
207 for 7 (60 overs)
1979
Details
60 overs max
Somerset
269 for 8 (60 overs)
Somerset won by 45 runs [17] Northamptonshire
224 (56.3 overs)
1980
Details
60 overs max
Middlesex
202 for 3 (53.5 overs)
Middlesex won by 7 wickets [18] Surrey
201 (60 overs)

NatWest Trophy

Year Final
Winner Result Runner-up
1981
Details
60 overs max
Derbyshire
235 for 6 (60 overs)
Match tied [19]
Derbyshire won having lost fewer wickets
Northamptonshire
235 for 9 (60 overs)
1982
Details
60 overs max
Surrey
159 for 1 (33.4 overs)
Surrey won by 9 wickets [20] Warwickshire
158 (57.2 overs)
1983
Details
60 overs max
Somerset
193 for 9 (60 overs)
Somerset won by 24 runs [21] Kent
169 (47.1 overs)
1984
Details
60 overs max
Middlesex
236 for 6 (60 overs)
Middlesex won by 4 wickets [22] Kent
232 for 6 (60 overs)
1985
Details
60 overs max
Essex
280 for 2 (60 overs)
Essex won by 1 run [23] Nottinghamshire
279 for 5 (60 overs)
1986
Details
60 overs max
Sussex
243 for 3 (58.2 overs)
Sussex won by 7 wickets [24] Lancashire
242 for 8 (60 overs)
1987
Details
60 overs max
Nottinghamshire
231 for 7 (49.3 overs)
Nottinghamshire won by 3 wickets [25]
Reserve day used; match reduced to 50 overs per innings
Northamptonshire
228 for 3 (50 overs)
1988
Details
60 overs max
Middlesex
162 for 7 (55.3 overs)
Middlesex won by 3 wickets [26] Worcestershire
161 for 9 (60 overs)
1989
Details
60 overs max
Warwickshire
211 for 6 (59.4 overs)
Warwickshire won by 4 wickets [27] Middlesex
210 for 5 (60 overs)
1990
Details
60 overs max
Lancashire
173 for 3 (45.4 overs)
Lancashire won by 7 wickets [28] Northamptonshire
171 (60 overs)
1991
Details
60 overs max
Hampshire
243 for 6 (59.4 overs)
Hampshire won by 4 wickets [29] Surrey
240 for 5 (60 overs)
1992
Details
60 overs max
Northamptonshire
211 for 2 (49.4 overs)
Northamptonshire won by 8 wickets [30] Leicestershire
208 for 7 (60 overs)
1993
Details
60 overs max
Warwickshire
322 for 5 (60 overs)
Warwickshire won by 5 wickets [31] Sussex
321 for 6 (60 overs)
1994
Details
60 overs max
Worcestershire
227 for 2 (49.1 overs)
Worcestershire won by 8 wickets [32] Warwickshire
223 for 9 (60 overs)
1995
Details
60 overs max
Warwickshire
203 for 6 (58.5 overs)
Warwickshire won by 4 wickets [33] Northamptonshire
200 (59.5 overs)
1996
Details
60 overs max
Lancashire
186 (60 overs)
Lancashire won by 129 runs [34] Essex
57 (27.2 overs)
1997
Details
60 overs max
Essex
171 for 1 (26.3 overs)
Essex won by 9 wickets [35] Warwickshire
170 (60 overs)
1998
Details
60 overs max
Lancashire
109 for 1 (30.2 overs)
Lancashire won by 9 wickets [36] Derbyshire
108 (36.4 overs)
1999
Details
50 overs max
Gloucestershire
230 for 8 (50 overs)
Gloucestershire won by 50 runs [37] Somerset
180 (45.1 overs)
2000
Details
50 overs max
Gloucestershire
122 for 3 (29.4 overs)
Gloucestershire won by 22 runs (D/L method) [38]
Rain stopped play after 29.4 overs; Gloucestershire target revised to 101.
Warwickshire
205 for 7 (50 overs)

C&G Trophy

Year Final
Winner Result Runner-up
2001
Details
50 overs max
Somerset
271 for 5 (50 overs)
Somerset won by 41 runs [39] Leicestershire
230 (45.4 overs)
2002
Details
50 overs max
Yorkshire
260 for 4 (48 overs)
Yorkshire won by 6 wickets [40] Somerset
256 for 8 (50 overs)
2003
Details
50 overs max
Gloucestershire
150 for 3 (20.3 overs)
Gloucestershire won by 7 wickets [41] Worcestershire
149 (46.3 overs)
2004
Details
50 overs max
Gloucestershire
237 for 2 (43.5 overs)
Gloucestershire won by 8 wickets [42] Worcestershire
236 for 9 (50 overs)
2005
Details
50 overs max
Hampshire
290 (50 overs)
Hampshire won by 18 runs [43] Warwickshire
272 (49.2 overs)
2006
Details
50 overs max
Sussex
172 (47.1 overs)
Sussex won by 15 runs [44] Lancashire
157 (47.2 overs)

Friends Provident Trophy

Year Final
Winner Result Runner-up
2007
Details
50 overs max
Durham
312/5 (50 overs)
Durham won by 125 runs [45]
Rain stopped play after 32.2 overs; Reserve day used
Hampshire
187 (41 overs)
2008
Details
50 overs max
Essex
218/5 (48.5 overs)
Essex won by 5 wickets [46] Kent
214 (50 overs)
2009
Details
50 overs max
Hampshire
221/4 (40.3 overs)
Hampshire won by 6 wickets [47] Sussex
219/9 (50 overs)

Wins by county 1963–2009[edit]

First class counties with no wins: Glamorgan and Leicestershire

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Cricket's strongest wind of change". ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  2. ^ "A Brief History/Benson & Hedges Cup". ESPNCricinfo. Retrieved 12 May 2022.
  3. ^ "Full Scorecard of Herefordshire vs Middlesex, Friends Provident Trophy (Gillette Cup / NatWest Trophy / C&G Trophy), 3rd round – Score Report". ESPNcricinfo.
  4. ^ "Scorecard of Essex vs Nottinghamshire, NatWest Trophy". Cricket Archive.
  5. ^ "Middlesex vs Surrey". ESPN.
  6. ^ "Final: Middlesex vs Worcestershire". ESPN.
  7. ^ "Lancashire wins NatWest Trophy final". ESPN.
  8. ^ "Northants vs Somerset, Gillette Cup Final". ESPN.
  9. ^ "Warwickshire vs Oxfordshire". ESPN.
  10. ^ "Essex vs Lancashire, Final". ESPN.
  11. ^ "2008 fixtures announced – Media Releases – News – ECB". ecb.co.uk. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  12. ^ Andrew McGlashan, Andrew Miller English game dumps 50 overs cricket, 27 August 2009, Cricinfo. Retrieved on 27 May 2010.

External links[edit]