The official County Championship was constituted on 16 December 1889, when secretaries of the major clubs gathered at Lord's to decide the following season's fixtures.

[4] The new competition began in the 1890 season and at first involved just the eight leading clubs: Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Sussex and Yorkshire.

Subsequently, the championship has been expanded to 18 clubs by the additions at various times of Derbyshire, Durham, Essex, Glamorgan, Hampshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Somerset, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

Stead's side won by an unknown margin and the source states that "this was the third time this summer that the Kent men have been too expert for those of Sussex".

There were a number of contemporary allusions to the best county including some in verse, such as one by a Kent supporter celebrating a victory over Hampshire in terms of "(we shall) bring down the pride of the Hambledon Club".

Analysis of 18th century matches has identified a number of strong teams who actually or effectively proclaimed their temporal superiority.

Kent, which had a celebrated team at the time, has long been acknowledged as a champion county in most seasons of the 1840s but in other years there is no clear-cut contender.

So, when title "claims" were made on behalf of Sussex in 1826 and 1827, it was for the same loose association based on Brighton Cricket Club that had a successful season in 1792.

As the popularity of organised cricket grew throughout England, more county clubs came into contention and, by the mid-1860s, they included the short-lived Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Lancashire, Middlesex and Yorkshire.

From 1864 to 1889, the county championship title remained unofficial except that the idea was widely promoted by individuals in the contemporary press and that had not happened hitherto apart from occasional points of view.

Each journalist tended to have his own ideas about the calculation method and the matches to be included, but there was a certain amount of consensus in the main, generally favouring the team with fewest defeats.

[8][9] The final tally over these 26 seasons was, therefore, Nottinghamshire (8 titles plus 7 shared); Gloucestershire (3/1); Surrey (3/1); Yorkshire (2/3); Lancashire (1/3); Middlesex (1/0).

Beginning in December 1872, three meetings were convened at which qualification rules were established, with the leading nine counties being represented either in writing or in person.

At the last of these sessions, held at the Oval on 9 June 1873, it was decided:[10][11] It was in the 1870s that newspapers began to print tables of inter-county results and then proclaim a champion on the basis of their chosen criteria.

As Derek Birley describes, the papers did not use standard criteria and so there were several seasons in which any title must be considered "shared", as there was no universally recognised winner.

With no consistency of approach, the issue inevitably led to argument, counter-arguments and confusion until the matter was taken in hand at the meeting of club secretaries in December 1889 where the official championship was constituted.

In general, it may be asserted that Gloucestershire with all three Grace brothers were the strongest team in most of the 1870s; Nottinghamshire were in the ascendancy from about 1879 to 1886; and then Surrey from 1887 through the start of the official championship in 1890.

[15] When the annual meeting of county club secretaries was held at Lord's on 10 December 1889, their purpose was to decide on a fixture programme for the 1890 season.

As reported by Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game:[16] "While the secretaries were engaged in making the fixtures the representatives of the eight leading counties – Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Lancashire, Kent, Middlesex, Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, and Sussex – held a private meeting to discuss the method by which the county championship should in future be decided.

The meeting was, we understand, not quite unanimous, but a majority were in favour of ignoring drawn games altogether and settling the question of championship by wins and losses.

The exception to this was the 1919 season, when there was an experiment with two-day matches played over longer hours, up to nine o'clock in the evening in mid-summer.

The two-up, two-down arrangement applied for 2017 and 2018, but it was then decided to reverse the sizes of the divisions with effect from 2020, with three teams to be promoted and only one relegated at the end of the 2019 season.

[21] This regulation was introduced on an experimental basis for the 2016 season but retained from 2017 to 2019 after being judged a success in its objectives of making games last longer and encouraging spin bowling.

[22] The mandatory toss was reinstated from the 2020 season with the ECB taking the view that increased pitch penalties and changes to the seam of the ball would improve the balance between batting and bowling.