Two months and two days after the last first-class match ended at Derby, Derbyshire return to The 3aaa County Ground for their tenth game of the Specsavers County Championship campaign.
Heritage Officer, David Griffin, examines the statistical background to the game.
Prior to this game, the two sides have met on 138 occasions, with Derbyshire winning on 40 occasions, Kent, 56, with 42 drawn matches plus one abandonment.
Derbyshire versus Kent is the second oldest fixture in the Club’s history, with the first encounter between the two counties taking place in July 1874, when Derbyshire, having previously only ever played Lancashire in their first seven games of first-class cricket, took on their opponents from the south-east at Wirksworth, winning by 33 runs. Derbyshire also won the return fixture that same year, by three wickets at Tunbridge Wells.
Derbyshire have played Kent at more grounds than any other county in first-class cricket, with the two sides meeting at 20 different grounds in this form of the game – the next highest is versus Essex, played on 16 different grounds.
Those 20 grounds are; Blackheath, Burton-on-Trent (Ind Coope Ground and The Town Ground), Buxton, Canterbury, Catford, Chatham, Chesterfield, Dartford, Derby, Dover, Folkestone, Gillingham, Gravesend, Ilkeston, Maidstone, Sheffield (Abbeydale Park), Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and Wirksworth.
Derbyshire’s highest innings total against Kent is 583-4 at Derby in 2009, when Chris Rogers made 208, one of three double centuries for the county against Kent. Chris Adams hold the record for the highest individual score – 216 – at Maidstone in 1995, while Peter Bowler made 210 at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield in 1990.
The highest individual score for Kent against Derbyshire is William Ashdown’s unbeaten 305 at Dover in 1935.
Derbyshire players have scored 45 centuries against Kent in first-class cricket, with Donald Carr, Wayne Madsen and Bruce Roberts leading the way with three each, while Carr, at Canterbury in 1959, Ian Hall, at Folkestone in 1965, and Billy Godleman at Derby in 2015, all scored a century in each innings of a match against Kent.
There have been two instances of both Derbyshire openers registering hundreds in the same innings against Kent; Ian Anderson and Kim Barnett at Chesterfield in 1983, and Steve Stubbings and Steve Titchard at Canterbury in 2000. In the game at Chesterfield in 1983, Anderson and Barnett made century partnerships for the first wicket in both innings of the game, a feat only achieved on one other occasion for the county, by Barry Wood and John Wright against Worcestershire in 1980.
Just two players have carried their bat through a completed innings for Derbyshire against Kent – Denis Smith at Ilkeston in 1939 and Alan Hill at Maidstone in 1984, when his 48 not out, out of 127, was the fifth lowest score for a Derbyshire batsman carrying his bat through a full innings.
There have been 15 instances of Derbyshire bowlers taking ten or more wickets in a match against Kent, with the remarkable William Mycroft performing the feat three times within four seasons, on each occasion taking twelve wickets in the match, with a best of 12-42 at Catford in 1875.
In all, Mycroft played 14 matches for Derbyshire against Kent, taking 113 wickets, and a measure of Mycroft’s amazing ability is that of those 113 wickets, only 33 of the batsmen dismissed made double figures, and only two batsmen passed 50.
The most recent instance of taking ten wickets in a match came from Devon Malcolm, who took 11-205 at Derby in 1996, while the best innings analysis in the 21st century is the 8-52 by Kevin Dean at Canterbury in 2000.
Tony Palladino took a career-best 7-53 against Kent at Derby in 2012 when the home side won a very close encounter by two wickets; a result which kept Derbyshire top of the Second Division in the year in which they were promoted as champions.
The best innings analysis was recorded by TS ‘Stan’ Worthington who took 8-41 at Chesterfield in 1928, and the best innings analysis at Derby was provided by Archie Slater who took 8-63 in 1931.
Joseph Marlow (1884), Dominic Cork (1994) and Kevin Dean (1998) all took hat tricks against Kent – all at Derby, while George Hay (1875 at Derby) and Alan Mellor (1979 at Maidstone) both took five wickets on their debuts in matches against Kent.
Four-day cricket is back! Derbyshire host three Specsavers County Championship matches in August and September. Buy in advance and save.
