The History of Leicestershire County Cricket Club

One of a series which presents the full history of cricket clubs enhanced by scorecards of the club's greatest matches, a full statistical section, boxed biographical features and photographs, this is the history of Leicestershire County Cricket Club from 1879. It was not until 1894 that the club became first-class. Its main efforts at the time were to avoid finishing last in the Championship and to remain solvent. Although the Club always had good players it wasn't until Raymond Illingworth arrived in 1969 that the team started to realise its potential. In the 1980s the fans had the pleasure of watching the leading English batsman of the day, David Gower, and for the first time there were three Leicestershire players in the Test team, Gower, Whitaker and de Freitas.