As the 2018 season approaches, Heritage Officer, David Griffin, looks towards the milestones and landmarks that lie ahead for Derbyshire’s players this summer; but first, he looks back at the statistical highlights of the 2017 season.
The 2017 season provided a host of significant statistical highlights, the most prominent of which was provided by Hamidullah Qadri. Aged just 16 years and 203 days, he became Derbyshire’s youngest ever Championship player and the second youngest to play first-class cricket, and the youngest to take a first-class wicket for the county.
In taking five wickets on debut against Glamorgan at Cardiff in June, he became the youngest player to take five wickets on debut in the UK, ever. The previous record holder was WG Grace who had held the record since 1865.
And in one of those peculiar statistical quirks for which cricket is renowned, in the following Championship game against Durham at Chesterfield, Imran Tahir became the oldest Derbyshire player to take five wickets on debut.
Only 13 players have ever taken five wickets on debut for Derbyshire, but Qadri and Tahir are the first born outside of the UK.
Debutants have become more plentiful in recent years; gone are the days when – as in 1962 and 1968 – the side was so settled that no-one made their debut for Derbyshire.
In 2017, however, Derbyshire handed debuts to no less than 15 players across all three formats of the game, including 13 in first class matches. Only once, in 1920, when 16 players were given debuts, has this number been exceeded.
In addition to the feats of Qadri and Tahir, there were many highlights in first-class matches, as follows;
- Loanee Conor McKerr took 10 wickets in the match against Northamptonshire at Northampton
- Jeevan Mendis bowled 447 balls in the match against Leicestershire at Derby – the most for the county since Geoff Miller’s 468 against Lancashire, also at Derby, in 1990
- Hardus Viljoen’s 15-170 against Sussex at Hove in September was the best analysis for DCCC since C Gladwin’s 16-84 against Worcestershire in 1952, and the fifth best in the club’s history
- There were nine instances of five wickets in an innings in 2017 – every one of them by a player born outside the UK
- Harry Podmore became the 300th player to score a first-class 50 for Derbyshire when making 66 not out v Sussex at Hove
- Billy Godleman and Luis Reece added 333 for the 1st wicket in the 2nd innings of the game against Northamptonshire at Derby – the highest-ever for Derbyshire’s first wicket, and the third highest for any wicket
- When Godleman and Reece produced their record partnership, they both scored centuries, the 14th time both Derbyshire opening batsmen had scored hundreds in the same innings, and the first since Wayne Madsen and Chris Rogers did so against the same opponents at Wantage Road in 2010
- Luis Reece’s 168 was the second highest first-class score for Derbyshire on debut, after Wayne Madsen’s 170 against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham in 2009
- The match aggregate of runs between Derbyshire and Leicestershire at Derby was 1,411, the 16th highest match aggregate in Derbyshire’s history
- Alex Hughes – capped at Chesterfield in September – topped Derbyshire’s averages for the first time, scoring 800 runs and averaging 40
- Hardus Viljoen topped the bowling averages, taking 24 wickets at an average of just 21.54
- Tom and James Taylor became the 26th pair of brothers to play first-class cricket for Derbyshire when they represented the county in the tour match against the West Indians at Derby
- James Taylor – just one day older than Qadri when he took his first wicket – became the second youngest Derbyshire player to take a first-class wicket when he dismissed West Indies’ Brathwaite in the tour match at Derby
Derbyshire reached their 26th quarter-final in limited overs matches, and their first in the shortest form of the game since 2005 when they finished second in the North Group of the T20 Blast competition, and their huge improvement in Twenty20 cricket was evidenced by several record-breaking performances as follows;
- Wayne Madsen scored 522 runs – the most ever for Derbyshire and in doing so became the first Derbyshire player to pass 500 runs in a season
- Wayne Madsen and Luis Reece both scored four half centuries – no player had previously managed more than three – and Madsen’s were scored consecutively
- Billy Godleman hit Derbyshire’s 500th six in Twenty20 cricket against Yorkshire at Leeds
- Imran Tahir’s 17 wickets were the most in a season for Derbyshire beating Tim Groenewald’s previous record of 16 in 2010
- Derbyshire hit 23 sixes in the two games against Nottinghamshire and still ended up losing both matches
- Alex Hughes took 10 outfield catches – only Greg Smith with 11 in 2009 has ever taken more
- Daryn Smit’s nine dismissals behind the wicket has only been bettered once, by Tom Poynton (10) in 2013
Finally, Royal London 50 cricket saw runs aplenty being scored with the following being the highlights;
- Derbyshire topped 300 runs in an innings on three occasions having never scored more than 300 twice in a season and just 11 times in all previously
- Wayne Madsen’s 112 vs Yorkshire at Headingley was only Derbyshire’s third century in one-day cricket at that venue and the first since Chris Taylor in 2006. Kim Barnett scored the other in 1989
- Billy Godleman (twice) and Alex Hughes scored List A 90s – the first time Derbyshire had scored three nineties in this format since 2002 when Michael Di Venuto, Steve Selwood and Steve Stubbings all hit 90s
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