County Cricket Day encourages fans to celebrate Championship cricket

County Cricket Day returns for a third year next month, with cricket fans new and old encouraged to head down to their nearest professional fixture on Saturday May 16 to support the county game.

A fan-led campaign that started in 2024, this year’s County Cricket Day falls during a round of County Championship action as well as on a day with four Women’s One-Day Cup fixtures.

“The idea was a shameless rip-off of Non-League Day in football,” says Alex Wilson, co-founder of County Cricket Day. “They’ve been very supportive of us and very happy for us to rip-off their idea.

“I’m a big Non-League football fan and have been going to watch my local Non-League team in Dulwich for over 10 years. Non-League football has really blown up in the last 10 years and I remember what it was like just before it got popular. You started to notice a bit of a vibe on the terrace.”

On a trip to watch Surrey in the Championship four years ago, Wilson got the same feeling and felt that same vibe from the atmosphere at The Oval.

“County cricket and Non-League football are similar in the sense that they’ve been unfairly maligned for a number of years and they are stereotypically for older people and a lot of people see them as irrelevant.

“At The Oval four years ago I felt that little nascent vibe that I’d felt at Non-League football. It’s inherently a great thing. We live in a sporting world where it’s borderline impossible to get Premier League football tickets if you can even afford them and even if you go you’re told to sit down and shut up and you can’t have any fun.

“Whereas going to the county cricket is a really good day out. It’s at a price point where even if you’ve got mates who have never been to cricket before, they’re still happy to come along and enjoy a nice day out. You can bring in a picnic, or a bottle of wine or some cans of beer. And at a lot of grounds you can go onto the outfield during the lunch and the tea break, which is a really special experience for people.

“I was noticing people were enjoying this at The Oval and I thought ‘we need to get this out there. It’s a really great experience. We need to tell more people about this experience and toot the trumpet of county cricket.’”

Wilson initially got the ball rolling through social media. Now in the campaign’s third year, he simply picks a day, lets the county clubs know the date and then starts to spread the word. Lovers of the county game have really gotten on board with it.

“The fans have been amazing. People who are passionate about cricket are the best messengers to take the game to new audiences. Cricket sidelines and silences its most passionate fans at its peril and the lesson of the last few years of County Cricket Day is that you can use that passion. If you’re a county cricket club, these are people who will happily do your marketing for free because they really believe in county cricket.”

The feedback so far after two years has been largely positive, with the professional county clubs welcoming the campaign, admittedly some more energetically initially than others, while County Cricket Day is also now officially backed by the ECB.

“I can forgive people at the counties for thinking ‘who is this weirdo in my inbox asking me to do stuff?’ but I think now the counties themselves are starting to see the value of it. We’ve had a really positive response this year.”

Wilson co-founded County Cricket Day with Annie Chave, editor of County Cricket Matters and a regular columnist for The Cricket Paper, whom he was introduced to during initial conversations about getting the campaign off the ground.

He said: “She deserves all the credit in the world for this. I don’t think it would have been a success without her. I think we make a really good team.

“People love her. She’s been a huge force in rallying the existing fans of county cricket to go out and spread the news of County Cricket Day.

Wilson feels that County Cricket Day is gradually cutting through and reaching the attention of the general population. A highlight for him last year being someone telling his dad about the day and asking him if he’d heard of it.

“Much like the success of Non-League football, we’ve just got to come back consistently. And the more we do this every single year, the more people will get used to it and the more people will get comfortable with the idea.

“My goal is to just keep doing this and we become part of the furniture, both of the game and the sporting summer, and it becomes an annual moment to shine a spotlight on the wonderful game of county cricket.”

For more information on County Cricket Day, visit countycricketday.com, and to see if your local county has any specific County Cricket Day offers, visit their website or contact the box office.