With the start of the new season approaching, we asked our Heritage Officer, David Griffin, to highlight approaching milestones and landmarks for the club and players.
26 May 2021 will provide the club with a special landmark; it will be 150 years to the day since Derbyshire County Cricket Club first played a first-class match.
It began on 26 May 1871 against Lancashire at Old Trafford and Derbyshire won by an innings and 11 runs as Dove Gregory took 6-9 in Lancashire’s first innings of just 25. Gregory’s analysis remains the best-ever by a Derbyshire bowler on his debut.
The other principal team landmark on the horizon is the 200th Twenty20 match.
There have been 205 scheduled matches in this format, but with 17 abandonments, only 188 have seen any action on the field, so the 12th game of the 2021 group stages (against Durham at Emirates Riverside) – assuming no prior abandonments – will be Derbyshire’s 200th.
This season will be Derbyshire’s 135th competing in first class cricket and their 117th in the county championship (plus one year in the Bob Willis Trophy in 2020).
Derbyshire’s captain, Billy Godleman has a number of upcoming milestones including becoming the fourth player to play 100 first class matches for the county this century – he’s currently on 93, and he should also become the 32nd player to reach 10,000 all formats runs, needing a further 849.
A repeat of his magnificent 2019 season when he made 2,073 runs would actually see him soar past 11,000!
Godleman has scored 22 all formats centuries for Derbyshire putting him in tenth position on the all-time list alongside Peter Kirsten and Les Townsend; there are some more outstanding names ahead of him but there is no reason why Godleman cannot score more hundreds and allow him to overtake Peter Bowler, Michael Di Venuto and Stan Worthington who sit only three hundreds ahead of him.
On the captaincy front, assuming Godleman is the man in charge for all 14 championship games, the tourist game against India A and all RL50 and T20 matches he’ll take his captaincy tally to 148 games, just one behind his T20 coach, Dominic Cork who is in fifth place in the captaincy table.
Matthew Critchley needs 541 all formats runs to reach 4,000 and another 46 wickets to get to 200. His form over the last couple of seasons suggests both targets are achievable.
Alex Hughes may well become the second Derbyshire player after Wayne Madsen to play 100 T20 games – he’s currently on 87, while 25 games in all formats will take him to 250 and his current all formats run tally is only 28 short of 5,000.
Wayne Madsen should play his 400th match for Derbyshire in 2021, becoming only the 14th to reach that total, and with a T20 run tally standing at 2,998 we can expect his 3,000th to come early in the Vitality Blast campaign.
Madsen has made 30 first class hundreds and 36 in all formats; those totals leave him three behind John Morris in both categories and a good summer for Madsen could see him overtake the man who signed him for Derbyshire and move into second place behind Kim Barnett.
In the field, Madsen’s 265 all formats catches place him 17th on Derbyshire’s all time list, although seven of those ahead of him were all specialist wicketkeepers. A tally of 300 by the end of the season is not beyond him – he took 45 in 2019.
Luis Reece requires a further 331 all formats run to reach 4,000 and another 132 to become the fift player (after Madsen, Wes Durston, Chesney Hughes, and Billy Godleman) to score 1,000 for the club in T20 matches.
With the ball, Reece needs 13 more to reach the 100 wicket mark in first class matches.
Billy Stanlake and Ben McDermott join Duston Melton in the overseas roles – the club can field any two in one game – becoming the 12th and 13th Australian internationals to play for Derbyshire. The first was Rod McCurdy in 1979 and the most recent was Usman Khawaja who made his debut in 2011; in between there have been some outstanding contributions to Derbyshire cricket by Australian players and is to be hoped that both the new boys provide supporters with some moments to remember.
Together, We Are All Derbyshire. Club Membership for the 2021 season is on sale now, priced at just £199. Members to have priority entry and all Memberships backed by our new guarantees.
