The BRM Chesterfield Festival of Cricket will see Derbyshire face Yorkshire once again at the famous old ground.
Heritage Officer David Griffin previews the match.
Derbyshire and Yorkshire have faced each other 214 times in first-class matches, although three of the scheduled games were abandoned without a ball being bowled, with a further 85 drawn.
Derbyshire’s record against Yorkshire is not a glorious one – just 20 wins set against 106 for the visitors – although some supporters will recall a brief golden period from 1989 to 1991 when Derbyshire won three consecutive games at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield, though nobody will recall the three successive wins back in the late 1870s including the only time Derbyshire have ever achieved home and away wins in the same season in 1879.
Derbyshire’s highest innings total against Yorkshire is 523 all out in the drawn fixture at Derby in 2005 when Ant Botha scored an undefeated 156 while Yorkshire’s top score came at Leeds in 2013 when they amassed 677 for seven declared with Joe Root making a superb 236 and Jonny Bairstow 186. This came after Chesney Hughes had scored 270 not out, the second highest individual score in Derbyshire’s history, but even that was not enough to stave off an innings defeat.
Yorkshire also won the return fixture at Chesterfield by an innings while the two encounters in 2023, at Chesterfield last June, and at Scarborough in September ended in wins for Yorkshire.
The game at Headingley at the end of April 2024 was rain-affected and ended in a draw although hundreds from Root, Harry Brook and Wayne Madsen brightened proceedings.
Derbyshire players have registered 60 hundreds in these games, four of which were double centuries, Kim Barnett, and Bill Storer each scoring four tons.
Barnett made 210 not out at Derby in 1987, taking part in a second wicket partnership with Tim Tweats of 417 which remains the highest for any wicket, and in addition to the doubles made by Barnett and Hughes, John Eggar scored 219 at Bradford in 1949 and Dean Jones 214 not out at Abbeydale Park, Sheffield in 1996.
Amongst the current Derbyshire squad, Wayne Madsen has two hundreds against Yorkshire to his name, scoring a magnificent 141 at Chesterfield in 2013, rated by many observers as the finest of his many centuries for the county, and a battling ton at Headingley earlier this season. In the fixture at Chesterfield last year Leus du Plooy (170) and Haider Ali (146) both made outstanding hundreds.
Bill Storer, one of four Derbyshire wicketkeepers to play Test cricket for England, was the first to score a hundred in each innings of a game for the county, making 100 and 100 not out against Yorkshire at Derby in 1896, while in the same match Harry Bagshaw became the sole Derbyshire player to make a hundred before lunch against Yorkshire.
Derbyshire have managed six century partnerships for the tenth wicket in first-class cricket and the two largest were both against Yorkshire: by Alan Hill and Martin Jean-Jacques (132 at Sheffield in 1986) and Geoff Miller and Simon Base (107 at Chesterfield in 1990).
Derbyshire’s bowlers have taken five Yorkshire wickets in an innings 113 times. The legendary 19th century fast bowler Bill Mycroft performed the feat ten times with a best of seven for 33 at Bramall Lane, Sheffield in 1879. He also recorded the best match figures – 13 for 65 – in the same game.
More recently, the last Derbyshire bowlers to take five wickets in an innings were Anuj Dal who took five for 72 in Yorkshire’s first innings at Scarborough in 2023, and Alex Thomson who recorded figures of five for 190 in the second.
Derbyshire’s best innings figures at Chesterfield were recorded by Simon Base who took seven for 60 in 1989 and produced the best match figures there of 12 for 153 in the same game.
Only one Derbyshire bowler has taken a hat trick against Yorkshire, John Platts performing the feat – the first bowler to take three in three for the county – at Derby in 1880.
