Kent County Cricket Club in 1906
After dominating county cricket in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, the players who made up Kent's great side of the 1840s had retired and by the 1850s the county had been reduced to often having to amalgamate with other sides to produce a challenging team. The formation of a County Club in Maidstone in 1859 and the amalgamation of this with the original Kent Cricket Club in 1870 to create the modern Kent County Cricket Club, provided the basis for re-emergence, although the club suffered from financial instability and Lord Harris's view was that Kent could not hope to compete at the level it once had throughout the 1870s and 1880s. When the County Championship was formerly established in 1890 Kent were initially able to finish only in mid table.
Crystal Palace Park Cricket Ground
The first recorded first-class cricket match on the ground was in 1864, when Kent County Cricket Club played Nottinghamshire. From 1869 to 1870, Kent played four further first-class matches at the ground, two in each season. The club has a tradition of playing cricket at grounds in what it terms "Metropolitan Kent". Grounds in nearby Beckenham, Blackheath, Catford and Dartford have all also been used by the club in the past for a total of more than 150 matches and the first match played by the county club after its foundation in 1842 was played at White Hart Field in Bromley.