As autumn arrives and the nights draw in, Derbyshire’s Heritage Officer David Griffin looks at the statistical details behind the 2024 cricket season.
Derbyshire’s 138th season of competitive cricket ended with a flourish of Wayne Madsen’s bat, the evergreen cricketer scoring his 38th first-class hundred for the county, and his fastest, off 116 balls as the orange and brown leaves of autumn blew across the outfield at Leicester.
The season began, however, with an abandoned game, the first time in Derbyshire’s history that the first Championship game of the season had fallen by the wayside.
In between, 12 all format games were won and 16 lost, an improvement of sorts on the eight wins and 12 defeats of 2023, but the win / loss ratio was skewed by the results in red ball cricket as Derbyshire ended the Championship season with their 17th wooden spoon. Their neighbours, Leicestershire, with 18, have the most spoons.
The first-class results – one win, albeit one more than in 2023 – and six defeats, were the outcome of scoring only 78% of the runs made in 2023, and taking just 85% of the wickets taken a year ago.
Taking 29 wickets fewer than in 2023 was probably not the defining issue but scoring more than 1,500 runs less than the 2023 tally indisputably affected Derbyshire’s chances of making sufficiently large totals to dominate games.
Wayne Madsen, in his 16th season with the county and at the age of 40, was the only player to pass 1,000 first class runs, averaging over 50, and ending the season with the highest aggregate of 1,341 despite missing the entire Metro Bank One-Day Cup tournament. He struck three hundreds and six fifties across red and white ball cricket and also topped the all format catching charts with 20.
Dropped catches were a feature of the red ball game and Madsen’s and Aneurin Donald’s total of 14 catches in the Championship was only half as many as Madsen took in 2023. In the course of Derbyshire’s 13 Championship matches, only 188 catches were held by all sides combined, the lowest number – other than during the five match Covid-19 season in 2020 – since 1894.
Two other players passed the 1,000 runs mark in all formats, Brooke Guest making 1,063 and David Lloyd 1,053.
With the ball, Zak Chappell took 31 first-class wickets and 64 in all competitions, topping the charts for the second successive season and deservedly receiving his County Cap in September.
He took 33 white ball wickets, 17 in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup and 16 in the Vitality Blast. Not since Steve Oldham took 35 limited overs wickets in 1982 has an English-born bowler taken so many wickets for Derbyshire in the shorter forms of the game.
Chappell also scored 590 runs including a remarkable 94 not out at Northampton to secure an unlikely win in the opening Metro Bank game, as well as three half-centuries in red ball matches. He also took six for 47 in Derbyshire’s sole Championship win against Glamorgan at Derby ending the 1,803-day run without a first class win at The County Ground.
The highest individual score of 207 was made by Matt Lamb against Gloucestershire at Bristol in May, highlighting his obvious batting talent. It was hugely sad when he announced his retirement from the professional game in September.
Luis Reece scored 125 against Middlesex at Lord’s in June, one of only five first-class hundreds this summer and a far cry from the 18 in 2023 and 21 in 2022.
All five hundreds were scored away from home and there have only been seven seasons when home supporters have been unable to witness a first-class hundred, although the previous most was just two in 1909, 1922 and 1965.
Reece scored his 8,000th run and took his 200th wicket in all forms of the game for Derbyshire in 2024, becoming the 14th cricketer to reach both of these landmarks and the first to do it since Dominic Cork in 2003. He scored 958 runs while Donald, who made 840, was at his best in the T20 Blast, scoring three fifties including two off just 19 balls, the fastest ever for Derbyshire, although he made 97 in the Championship game against Yorkshire at Headingley.
Behind the wicket Brooke Guest completed his 200th career dismissal, the 10th Derbyshire ‘keeper to pass this landmark in all forms of the game. He completed 47 all format dismissals including seven stumpings. He also scored his 4,000th run and became only the second gloveman to score over 1,000 runs in a season three times, a record he shares with Luke Sutton.
Alex Thomson took 24 first-class wickets, 12 of them at Cardiff in April, the best match return by a Derbyshire spinner since Geoff Miller took 12 against Leicestershire at Coalville in 1982, while Pat Brown took 22 in the T20 Blast, only the fifth Derbyshire bowler to pass 20 T20 wickets in a season.
Three players scored over 300 T20 runs, Madsen (336), Lloyd (327) and Donald (315) with Chappell (16) and Samit Patel (10) the other leading bowlers after Brown.
Harry Came topped the 50-over run scoring chart with 281 including a fine 113 not out in the crushing nine wicket win against Middlesex at Derby, while Anuj Dal’s injury-hit summer nonetheless contained a brilliant 69-ball hundred in the Metro Bank competition against Somerset at Taunton. Dal’s hundred helped Derbyshire to a narrow one wicket win with 317 for nine being the county’s record successful run chase in one day cricket. Only four players have made faster one day hundreds for Derbyshire.
Harry Moore, already the youngest cricketer to represent Derbyshire, made his first-class debut this summer and impressed many observers with 16 wickets across red and white ball at an average of 26.75.
The returns of the overseas players, Daryn Dupavillon, Cameron Fletcher, Mohammad Amir and Blair Tickner were mixed and Mickey Arthur has already announced that Australian Caleb Jewell will be joining Derbyshire in 2025 to strengthen the batting.
Amir arrived later than anticipated, Tickner went home early following his wife’s terrible diagnosis with leukaemia and Fletcher missed out on several T20 games – the format he was signed for – though injury. Dupavillon took 30 wickets but was not selected towards the end of the season.
Jack Morley impressed while on loan, taking 16 first-class wickets, but Sam Conners’ final bow before his departure to Durham for 2025 realised only 11 wickets.
Ross Whiteley’s return after more than a decade away was highlighted by his match-winning 46 from 16 balls and three for 23 against Nottinghamshire in the T20 Blast at Derby, Derbyshire’s first T20 win over their nearest neighbours since 2015.
Qualification for the Blast quarter-finals was missed at the last hurdle for the second season in a row, while five Metro Bank One-Day Cup wins were not enough to reach the knockout stages, although five wins out of eight was the best return since they won six out of 12 in 2011. Net run rate was the difference between qualifying and not qualifying and the heavy defeat by Hampshire at Southampton – by 143 runs – ultimately cost Derbyshire a quarter-final place.
Eight complete days of Championship cricket were lost to the weather, the most since the same number were lost in 2017. The 21st century record is 10 days in 2000, while the overall record is 12 days in 1931 and 1969.
Ultimately, the season was one of disappointment, punctuated by some good and occasionally excellent cricket. The sole Championship win was comprehensive – by 10 wickets – and the white ball wins over Nottinghamshire at Derby and Yorkshire at Chesterfield gave capacity home crowds plenty to cheer about. The win over Yorkshire was Derbyshire’s seventh T20 victory in a row over their northern neighbours at Queen’s Park – a quite remarkable record.
The Metro Bank wins included two by nine wickets, over Middlesex and Lancashire at Derby, plus two very close calls at Northampton and Taunton, while the four wicket win at Chester-le-Street was Derbyshire’s first in one day cricket in the northeast since 2007.
But heavy defeats in the County Championship served notice that the output of runs and wickets will need to be far higher in 2025 if there is to be any noticeable improvement in that competition, while white ball cricket saw 11 wins and 10 defeats which suggests performances in those formats are going in the right direction.
The final word, however, is on Madsen. The longest serving player on the staff will be 41 when next April comes around and he will enter his 17th season with Derbyshire on the back of having scored 3,057 runs at an average of 52.70 in first-class matches over the course of the last three summers, testimony to his longevity, skill and consistency.
