Derbyshire County Cricket Club are saddened by the news that one of the club’s former captains, Dean Jones, has died, aged 59.
Heritage Officer, David Griffin, offers this tribute.
Dean Mervyn Jones had already played 52 Test matches and 164 One-Day Internationals for Australia in a distinguished career before arriving at Derbyshire in 1996, on a two-year contract.
Jones was still a high quality batsman, and in the shorter form of the game remained one of the best in the world. He had already played for Durham and was regarded as the ideal character to bring together a talented but occasionally dispirited dressing room.
The results were remarkable – after three consecutive bottom five finishes in the County Championship, a Jones-inspired Derbyshire rose to finish second in the table in 1996. They lost out to Leicestershire who had beaten them early in the season and had that result been reversed, Derbyshire would have won the title.
Supporters of Derbyshire have had few more enjoyable summers watching Derbyshire – especially in the first-class game – although in 1997 things didn’t go so well and Jones returned to Australia in mid-season.
However, memories of his batting will linger long; he scored 2,653 runs in all formats in 1996, the fourth highest tally of runs in a season for Derbyshire, including a county record ten hundreds.
His running between the wickets was astonishing, a legacy of those 164 ODIs, and his overall performances with the bat, albeit for only a season and a half, match those of any other batsman in the club’s history.
Since they won the 1936 County Championship, Derbyshire have enjoyed many great overseas players and some wonderful triumphs, but Dean Jones came closest to delivering that greatest prize of all in the glorious summer of 1996. For that, he will be remembered as long as the game is played in Derbyshire.
Everyone associated with the club offers their condolences and sympathy to his family and friends.
