Friends Provident Trophy

The Friends Provident Trophy was a one-day cricket competition in the British Isles.

It was one of the four tournaments in which the eighteen first-class counties competed each season. They were joined by teams from Scotland and Ireland. Lancashire won the title a record seven times.

The competition was previously known as the Gillette Cup (1963–1980), the NatWest Trophy (1981–2000), and the C&G Trophy (2000–2006). For a short period following the 2006 season, the competition was known as the ECB One-Day Trophy because no sponsors were forthcoming when Cheltenham and Gloucester decided to end their association with the competition after the 2006 season. The tournament, along with the Pro40 forty-overs competition, was replaced by the ECB 40 competition from the 2010 season.

It was the first top-level one-day competition to be introduced in English and Welsh cricket, amid concern about falling attendances at County Championship matches in the early 1960s.

The competition was based on the Midlands Counties Knockout Cup experiment of 1962, when Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire played one-innings-a-side matches which each lasted one day. The MCC decided to hold a limited-overs competition (65 overs-a-side) the following year for all first-class counties, sponsored by American safety razor company Gillette. The original title was "The First Class Knock Out Competition for the Gillette Cup".

The first match (which was also retrospectively identified as the first List A cricket match after that designation was developed), was a Preliminary Round match on 1 May 1963 at Old Trafford, Manchester with Lancashire facing Leicestershire. The match ended up lasting two days due to rain. Peter Marner scored the first century and Brian Statham was the first bowler to take 5 wickets in a match.

Sussex were the first winners of the Gillette Cup, beating Worcestershire in the final at Lord's. Norman Gifford was the first "Man of the Match" for a final.

In the inaugural season, the matches were 65 overs per side, with a bowler bowling a maximum of 15 overs.^{[citation needed]} In 1964, this was reduced to 60 overs with a bowler bowling a maximum of 13.^{[citation needed]} For the 1966 competition until 1998, the maximum was 12.^{[citation needed]}