Founded in 1882, the club held minor status until it was elevated to first-class in 1894 pending its entry into the County Championship in 1895.Since then, Warwickshire have played in every top-level domestic cricket competition in England.

The club's home is Edgbaston Cricket Ground in central Birmingham, which also regularly hosts Test and One-Day International matches.

They competed in the County Championship from 1895 but despite being strong in batting, their bowling was, until the arrival of Sam Hargreave and Frank Field in 1899, very weak.

In 1911 he headed both batting and bowling averages and, along with a fully fit Frank Field, enabled Warwickshire to take the Championship from the "Big Six"[2] for the only time between 1890 and 1935.

When Wyatt left for Worcestershire after World War II, they declined even further despite Hollies' wonderful bowling in 1946 – with no support at all, he took 175 wickets for only 15 each.

The acquisition of New Zealand speedster Tom Pritchard gave Hollies the necessary support and by 1948 they had one of the strongest attacks in county cricket.

After Hollies' retirement in 1957, there were some very poor seasons (though they came fourth in 1959 due to Mike Smith's superb batting) until Tom Cartwright emerged as a top-class seam bowler in 1962.

In 1971 Lance Gibbs' magnificent bowling enabled them to come second, whilst brilliant batting gave them a clear Championship win in 1972.

In 1981 and 1982, with Bob Willis doing nothing for them whilst producing match-winning form for England, they averaged over 45 runs for each wicket they took – still a record.

Only under the coaching of Bob Woolmer and captaincy of Dermot Reeve (with their allowed foreign player being one of Brian Lara, Shaun Pollock or Allan Donald) did the team become consistently successful.

Although they had won the NatWest Trophy in 1989, it was their astonishing victory in the same competition in 1993, overhauling a record score posted by Sussex in the final, which launched their most dominant period in English cricket.

This was to be the last trophy of Dermot Reeve's captaincy with him stepping down during the 1996 season, Bob Woolmer also having moved on to coach South Africa.

Performances for the next few years were poor, including relegation to the second division of the County Championship and National Cricket leagues.

Until the year 2005, the club captain was Nick Knight, the coach was John Inverarity, and the Chief Executive was Dennis Amiss, though all three stepped down at the end of the season.

The 2007 Championship season was a big disaster for Warwickshire, who were relegated to Division Two, after not winning a single game since they topped the table in early May.

Early in 2016, Varun Chopra resigned the captaincy in order to focus on batting, with Ian Bell taking over as captain.

This meant that Warwickshire finished second in the Midlands, West and Wales Division behind Gloucestershire, and qualified for the finals day as the best runner-up.

Although they had managed to beat Glamorgan at Cardiff once, Warwickshire were not able to achieve victory again, and lost by 5 wickets to the Dragons, who progressed to the finals day, and eventually went out to the 2004 victors, the Leicestershire Foxes.

Warwickshire secured third position in the table, but their record was worse than both Yorkshire and Kent (who both finished third in their respected leagues), so did not qualify for the quarter-final.

2007 Warwickshire recruited the services of twice winner, and Twenty20 expert Darren Maddy for the 2007 season, and his expertise helped the team to once again reach the quarter-finals of the competition.

2014 The Birmingham Bears came fourth in the North Group (behind Lancashire Lightning, Nottinghamshire Outlaws and Worcestershire Rapids) to qualify for the knockout stages.

[9] Their playing squad and coaching staff are the same as the Warwickshire first-class and List A team, although an additional overseas player is granted for the T20 Blast.

Once again under a new captain in Ian Bell Birmingham performed poorly, finishing sixth in the North Group winning just 6 of their 14 games.

Jeetan Patel returned as overseas player for a third season, this year joined by wicketkeepers Luke Ronchi and Matthew Wade who both played half the tournament each.

Under the same captain and same coaching, with the same overseas players, the Bears missed out on the quarter-finals for just the second time in their history, winning just 6 of their 14 group games.