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.
List of Kent County Cricket Club players
The details are the player's usual name followed by the years in which he was active as a Kent player and then his name is given as it would usually appear on modern match scorecards. Note that many players represented other teams besides Kent. Current players are shown as active to the latest year in which they played for the club. The list excludes Second XI and other players who did not play for the club's first team. Players who represented the county before August 1842 are included only if they also played for the county club after its formation.