ABSTRACT
By the start of the twentieth century, the game at the national level, had seen the staging of Test cricket against Australia and the creation of a countrywide Championship, based, almost by default, around the bounds of a county. But there was a rather diverse pattern to the actual location of county games, and various locations were chosen for county games. Logical, hierarchical models such as Central Place Theory and the Rank-Size Rule therefore offer little help when analysing these late nineteenth-century patterns. Both of these theories assume maximiser behaviour, i.e. that profit maximisation was a key factor, and that rational economic behaviour took place. As Eric Midwinter's classification showed, many county clubs operated in more of a philanthropic and social way during the Victorian era, so the lack of an ordered and rational pattern may not be surprising.
