Hampshire's Early Championship Seasons 1895-1908 — Last Place and Llewellyn

The 1895 Championship admitted five new counties: Derbyshire (re-admitted), Essex, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire. The MCC formally recognised the competition that year. Hampshire's recovery had been driven by Lord Tennyson's grandfather and Major Robert Poore, who served as captain in his Army leaves.

The county's early rebuilding was complicated by the Boer War (1899-1902), which removed officers (including Greig and Poore) from cricket for long stretches.

Llewellyn arrived in England in 1899 having played for Natal and on a Hampshire residential qualification. His 1901 season was the breakthrough.

Hampshire had been a fluctuating county presence since the 18th century, but lost first-class status in 1886 after a string of poor results. They returned in 1895, when the MCC formally recognised the County Championship's existence and admitted five new sides to the competition.

The debut season (1895) was respectable. Hampshire finished tenth, sixteen points behind champions Surrey, winning their first two matches against Somerset and Derbyshire and beating Yorkshire at Sheffield in August. The first home first-class match was a draw against Surrey at Crystal Palace (then in development) and the second won at Southampton.

Fortunes then declined. Hampshire failed to win a single Championship match in 1900, finishing last. They were last or equal-last in 1902, 1903, 1904 and 1905 too. The lone bright year was 1901, when Charlie Llewellyn — the Natal-born all-rounder who had qualified for Hampshire by residence and was the first cricketer of mixed race to play in major English cricket — took 168 first-class wickets and made over 1,000 runs. Captain Robert Greig (on temporary leave from the Indian Army) added stability and Hampshire that year won as many matches as they lost.

The decade ended with a quiet 1908 season under Major E. G. Wynyard's captaincy. Hampshire finished mid-table for the first time since 1895. Major investments in the Northlands Road ground at Southampton and the development of the Bournemouth and Portsmouth out-grounds laid the basis for steady (if unspectacular) county presence through the next century.

“Hampshire's struggle for survival in the Championship of the early 1900s was as protracted as that of any new county in cricket history.”

Hampshire were not strong enough to rise much further until the 1920s, when George Brown, Phil Mead and Alec Kennedy arrived. The county would not win the Championship until 1961 under Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie. But the 1895 admission and the gradual stabilisation across 1900-1908 prevented a second collapse of the kind that had ended the old Hampshire CCC in 1886.

Llewellyn left Hampshire in 1910 over a contract dispute and continued in the leagues. He died in Surrey in 1964 aged 87.