Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: How long is the English cricket season?
The 2019 English cricket season will run between 26 March and 26 September. It will be the 120th in which the County Championship has been an official competition and will feature first-class, one-day and Twenty20 cricket competitions throughout England and Wales.
The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. The Ashes are regarded as being held by the team that most recently won the Test series. If the test series is drawn, the team that currently holds the Ashes retains the trophy. The term originated in a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, "The Sporting Times", immediately after Australia's 1882 victory at The Oval, its first Test win on English soil. The obituary stated that English cricket had died, and "the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia". The mythical ashes immediately became associated with the 1882–83 series played in Australia, before which the English captain Ivo Bligh had vowed to "regain those ashes". The English media therefore dubbed the tour "the quest to regain the Ashes".
1885 was the 99th season of cricket in England since the foundation of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). It was the third in succession in which Nottinghamshire was proclaimed the champion county.
An unofficial seasonal title sometimes proclaimed by consensus of media and historians prior to December 1889 when the official County Championship was constituted. Although there are ante-dated claims prior to 1873, when residence qualifications were introduced, it is only since that ruling that any quasi-official status can be ascribed. 
The return match between Kent and Lancashire was cancelled because Lord Harris objected to the bowling of two Lancashire players
1883 was the 97th season of cricket in England since the foundation of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). There was the first of four successive titles won by Notts, and the beginning of the "Great Revival" of Surrey, who had been among the weaker counties since 1866.An unofficial seasonal title sometimes proclaimed by consensus of media and historians prior to December 1889 when the official County Championship was constituted. Although there are ante-dated claims prior to 1873, when residence qualifications were introduced, it is only since that ruling that any quasi-official status can be ascribed.
Opening batsman and former captain Alastair Cook holds several England Test cricket records. Playing between 2006 and 2018, he scored 12,472 runs, making him the only England player to score 10,000 Test runs. He scored a record 57 half-centuries and 33 centuries. As a slip fielder, Cook has also taken the most catches for England with 175 and holds the England record for the most catches taken in Test series with 13. Captaining his side from 2010 until he stood down in 2016, Cook holds the record for the most matches played as English skipper with 59, the Test record for the most consecutive matches played with 159 and the record for the most matches played for England with 161.
Although the first Test series played between England and Australia was in the 1876–77 season, the Ashes originated from the solitary Test which the two nations contested in 1882. England lost the match, played at The Oval, and a mock obituary was posted in "The Sporting Times", declaring the death of English cricket. It stated that: "The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia." The Honourable Ivo Bligh adopted the term and, as captain of the English party that travelled to Australia the following winter, promised to bring the "Ashes" home.
The most prolific Test wicket-taker for England is James Anderson. Making his debut in 2003, he has taken a total of 570 wickets throughout his 146-match career, – the most by a fast bowler in Test cricket. He has also achieved 27 five-wicket hauls in an innings, equal best with Ian Botham. The record for the most ten-wicket hauls for England is held by Sydney Barnes with seven, who also holds the Test cricket record for the most wickets taken in a series with 49 during the English tour of South Africa in 1913–14. Alan Knott is England's most successful wicket-keeper having taken 269 dismissals. England claims two age records, James Southerton as the oldest player to make his Test debut at 49 and Wilfred Rhodes aged 52 as the oldest cricketer to ever play in a Test match.
The top five records are listed for each category, except for the team wins, losses and draws and the partnership records. Tied records for fifth place are also included. Explanations of the general symbols and cricketing terms used in the list are given below. Specific details are provided in each category where appropriate. All records include matches played for England only, and are correct .
, England have played 1,008 Test matches resulting in 364 victories, 299 defeats and 345 draws for an overall winning percentage of 36.11, the third highest winning percentage of Test playing teams. England has played the highest number of Test matches, ahead of Australia who have competed in 819. England has been the most successful against Bangladesh, having won nine out of ten Tests against them. England played in the debut Test matches of Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies – winning all of them except against Australia.
From the "Whitehall Evening Post" (Tues 1 August) — "We are informed that the great match at Cricket, which has been so long in agitation, will be decided one day next week on the downs at Calais. On this match near £5,000 is depending : the players are to be all English men".
The International Cricket Council (ICC), which has its headquarters in Dubai, is the global governing body of cricket. It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909 by representatives from England, Australia and South Africa, renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965, and took up its current name in 1989. The ICC in 2017 has 105 member nations, twelve of which hold full membership and can play Test cricket. The ICC is responsible for the organisation and governance of cricket's major international tournaments, notably the men's and women's versions of the Cricket World Cup. It also appoints the umpires and referees that officiate at all sanctioned Test matches, Limited Overs Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals.
The earliest known mention of the concept occurs in a report by the "London Evening Post" of 7 to 9 September 1734 which states that the London Cricket Club, being "desirous of playing one more match before the season is expired, do challenge to play with any eleven men in England". The challenge excluded members of Croydon Cricket Club, with whom London were in dispute. It is possible that challenges of this sort had been issued previously but no records of them have been found. There had been matches involving, for example, a team representing one county against a team bearing a patron's name and it is possible that teams of the latter type included players from a wide geographical area. In the 1730s, "any eleven men in England" would in practice have come from the southeastern counties only: e.g., Berkshire, Essex, Hampshire, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex.
The 1970–71 Ashes series consisted of seven cricket Test matches, each of five days with six hours play each day and eight ball overs. It formed part of the MCC tour of Australia in 1970–71 and the matches outside the Tests were played in the name of the Marylebone Cricket Club. Ray Illingworth's England team beat Bill Lawry's Australians 2–0 and regained the Ashes, the only full Test series in Australia in which the home team failed to win a Test. "The Momentous Series of 1970–71" was pivotal in cricket history and "essentially ushered in the modern period of Test cricket". It was the first Test series to have more than five Tests and the first One Day International in cricket history was played in Melbourne; like the first test match in history it was won by Australia.
In addition to the one-day series and tournaments organised by the nations themselves, the ICC organises two One Day International tournaments. The World Cup is held every four years; it involves all the Test-playing nations and a number of teams advancing from the immediately preceding ICC World Cup Qualifier. The ICC Champions Trophy, previously known as the ICC Knockout Cup, is a shorter tournament held every four years in between World Cups. The ICC also organises a T20 International tournament, the ICC World Twenty20, which is generally held every two years and, as in the latest competition, involves the ten full ICC members and six associate members who qualified through a qualifier competition, the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier.
The season will begin on 26 March with the first of three rounds of matches between first-class counties and the six Marylebone Cricket Club University teams. Each first-class county will play one first-class match against a university side before the start of the County Championship season in April.
The 2006–07 cricket series between Australia and England for The Ashes was played in Australia from 23 November 2006 to 5 January 2007. Australia won the series and regained the Ashes that had been lost to England in the 2005 series. The five Tests of the series were played at Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. In winning, Australia completed a 5–0 "whitewash", the first time this had happened in an Ashes series since 1920–21. The series was also notable for the retirement of four significant Australian players, namely Justin Langer, Damien Martyn, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne.
The rules of football were first drafted in 1863 by Ebenezer Cobb Morley, and England has the oldest football clubs in the world. Recognised by FIFA as the birthplace of club football, Sheffield F.C., founded in 1857, is the world's oldest football club. The first ever international football match was between England and Scotland in 1872. Referred to by the sport's governing body FIFA as the "home of football", England hosted the 1966 FIFA World Cup, and won the tournament. With a 32.3 million viewing audience, the 1966 final is the most watched television event ever in the United Kingdom. The English Barclays Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world. Its biggest clubs include Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City. In 2016, Leicester City, who were 5,000-1 outsiders at the start of the season, became champions. By some measures it was the greatest sporting upset ever: multiple bookmakers had never paid out at such long odds for any sport. As is the case throughout the UK, football in England is renowned for the intense rivalries between clubs and the passion of the supporters, which includes a tradition of football chants, such as, "You're Not Singing Any More" (or its variant "We Can See You Sneaking Out!"), sung by jubilant fans towards the opposition fans who have gone silent (or left early).
The modern game of lawn tennis originated in Birmingham, England, in the 1860s, and after its creation, tennis spread throughout the upper-class English-speaking population, before spreading around the world. Major Walter Clopton Wingfield is credited as being a pioneer of the game. The world's oldest tennis tournament, the Wimbledon championships, first occurred in 1877, and today the event takes place over two weeks in late June and early July. Created in the Tudor period in the court of Henry VIII, the English dessert strawberries and cream is synonymous with the British summer, and is famously consumed at Wimbledon.
1842 was the 56th season of cricket in England since the foundation of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). The official foundation of Kent County Cricket Club took place in Canterbury."6 August". Formation of the original Kent County Cricket Club in Canterbury; it was reformed as the present club in 1859. Teams representing Kent had been playing regularly since the early 18th century but these were invariably "ad hoc" sides raised by wealthy patrons.
The first cricket Test match was played in 1877 between Australia and England. Cricket was contested at the 1900 Summer Olympics where Great Britain defeated France by 158 runs. However, the International Olympic Committee cancelled cricket as an Olympic sport afterwards.
Cricket has been played in Australia for over 210 years. The first recorded cricket match in Australia took place in Sydney in December 1803 and a report in the Sydney Gazette on 8 January 1804 suggested that cricket was already well established in the infant colony. Intercolonial cricket in Australia started with a visit by cricketers from Victoria to Tasmania in February 1851. The match was played in Launceston on 11–12 February with Tasmania winning by 3 wickets.
Australia and England drew the Test and series 1–1, with Australia retaining the Ashes for the fourth time after regaining them in 1958–59. It was the second time the two teams had drawn the series in the last three Ashes series, with 15 of the 20 Tests being drawn (the next series was also drawn 1–1). It had already been realised that the captains on both sides were unusually cautious when playing each other as so much was at stake even though Bobby Simpson and Mike Smith had done all that they could to make the games interesting.
The 1965–66 Ashes series consisted of five cricket Test matches, each of five days with six hours play and eight ball overs. It formed part of the MCC tour of Australia in 1965–66 and the matches outside the Tests were played in the name of the Marylebone Cricket Club. M.J.K. Smith led the England team with the intent on
regaining the Ashes lost in the 1958–59 Ashes series, but the series was drawn 1-1 and they were retained by Australia. The Australian team was captained by Bobby Simpson in three Tests, and his vice-captain Brian Booth in two Tests.
Cricket has been played in Hadspen, at Entally and grounds nearer the town's centre, since at least the 1860s. The cricket oval at Entally was one of the first in Australia and was hosting matches before Melbourne's foundation. During his side's 1874 tour of Australia the great English cricketer W. G. Grace played on the ground. Aside from cricket Entally's grounds were often open for picnics and grand annual events. The Hadspen "Chieftains" cricket club was formed in the 1987–88 season and plays as part of the Northern Tasmania Cricket Association. They won the association's A grade premiership in the 1991–92 and 1993–94 seasons, and the Charltons Cup Premiership—a combined competition with the North East Cricket Association—in the 1993–94 and 1994–95 seasons.
The 1740 English cricket season was the 44th cricket season since the earliest recorded eleven-aside match was played. Details have survived of eight matches. Each of the surviving match records features London Cricket Club with half the known matches played at the Artillery Ground in Finsbury.
The 2018 English cricket season ran between 1 April and 27 September 2018 and was the 119th in which the County Championship has been an official competition. It featured first-class, one-day and Twenty20 cricket competitions throughout England and Wales.
The 1730 English cricket season was the 34th cricket season since the earliest recorded eleven-aside match was played. Details have survived of 14 matches as well as four notable single wicket matches.
The 1748 English cricket season was the fourth season following the earliest known codification of the Laws of Cricket.