When the County Championship resumed in May 1919 after the four-year wartime break, the MCC introduced an experimental two-day match format with extended hours of play. Player exhaustion and a string of unsatisfactory finishes — many matches drawn, several rushed — led to the experiment being abandoned after a single season.
The pre-war County Championship had used three-day matches. With the war over and the 1919 season needing to be organised at short notice, the MCC sought a compromise.
MCC committees sat through winter 1918-19 to draw up the new structure. The two-day decision was taken in early 1919.
The 1919 season was the first full season of post-war cricket. Faced with a depleted playing strength, exhausted soldiers returning to professional sport, and uncertainty over public appetite, the MCC opted to compress the championship into two-day matches with hours of play extended to 11.30 to 7.30. Each county was to play roughly 16 matches. The experiment was unpopular almost from the start. Players, many only weeks back from war service, found the long days punishing. Spinners particularly struggled to bowl out sides in time. Of the matches played, well over 40 per cent were drawn. Yorkshire won the championship under their new captain D.C.F. Burton with 12 wins from 26 matches. By the autumn of 1919 the counties had voted to revert to three-day cricket from 1920, and the two-day experiment was filed away as a post-war curiosity.
Winter 1918-19: MCC plans 1919 fixture list
Early 1919: Two-day experiment confirmed
May 1919: Championship begins
Sep 1919: Yorkshire crowned champions
Oct 1919: Counties vote to return to three-day cricket
Winter 1918-19
MCC drafts 1919 schedule
May 1919
First two-day championship season begins
Sep 1919
Yorkshire win title
1920
Three-day matches restored
“Two-day matches were not a success. Most counties wanted to revert.”
The 1920 season returned to three-day matches. The 1919 experiment is the only season in County Championship history played to a two-day format.
A well-meant attempt to ease post-war cricket back into life that produced too many drawn matches and was killed within a year.
The 1919 experiment is sometimes cited in debates about championship length and format — including the 21st-century Hundred and T20 debates — as the original case study in trying to shorten the county game.
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