Notts last won it when we were last runners up in 1981. My work colleague was playing for Sussex then, and Notts won it by virtue of having a blatantly home-favouring pitch, which the groundsman used to prepare every day.
They won something like 9 out of 12 at home, and about 1 away.
In the crunch match at Trent Bridge, Imran Khan bowled and it hits the batsman about 9 inches off the ground straight in front of the stumps. The Sussex players all went up and the umpire said not out. Imran promptly called him several kinds of bastard, and sat in the middle of the pitch until he gave him out.
John Barclay, the skipper, kindly reminded him to carry on bowling, and he duly got up, hissing at the umpire every time he walked back to his mark.
Notts won the championship by 4 points.
My colleague, who is extremely mild-mannered and easy going, still to this day calls them, 'f***ing cheats' for that.
Nottinghamshire won it in 1907, 1929, 1981 and 1987.
Derbyshire won it in 1936.
The Crickinfo.com website claims that Northamptonshire have won it once (but they don't seem to appear in the list of winners - unless they are counting the 2nd division championship in 2000 - but they don't seem to be counting Sussex as a 2nd division championship winner the following year).
And I can't find any trace of Gloucestershire having won it. Nor Somerset.
Somerset, Northants and Durham have never won it but only Sussex have been runners-up 7 times including consecutively 1932/33/34.
The oldest county and the inventors of cricket.
Good old Sussex by the sea!
PS Cheating Notts were only 2 points ahead of us in'81.
This table was compiled by Peter Wynne-Thomas and published in the journal of The Association of Cricket Statisticians in December 1980. It is based on the research of several people including Robert Brooke and John Goulstone.
Prior to 1890, a county is named as Champion when it went through the season unbeaten by another county or where there is a contemporary mention of a county being Champion.
1825 is chosen as the starting date as this is the year when inter-county matches restarted after a long break (from 1796).
In the period 1864 to 1889, before the start of the formal County Championship, the sporting press had selected the season's champions. In the mid 1870's the press instigated some sort of merit table, but there was not much consistency in the method used for calculating the champions or even in which matches to include.
Usually, the team with fewest defeats was awarded the Championship, but by the mid 1880s a points system was being used - usually one point for a win and half point for a draw.
The table gives the Champions as quoted by different sources. It shows that although mostly there was general, if not universal agreement, sometimes there was a confusing diversity of views.
Great work, the good Lord. I thought we may have been "elected" champs some way back but my Wisden didn't cover these undetermined years.
Smashing weather map action at the top of this thread also, shame I never get on here till late. Hope the taxi driver and his mates I met Sunday night are making the most of it up there, glad im waiting till Hove next week.