Wayne Madsen has raised his bat to past players after being voted Derbyshire’s best County Championship cricketer in a recent ECB poll.
The 36-year-old was chosen above former Derbyshire greats Kim Barnett, Bob Taylor and Dominic Cork after the ECB invited supporters to name the best player to represent the county.
Madsen said it was a “great honour” to receive the accolade while acknowledging the qualities and achievements of his fellow nominees.
“I feel very humble, I can name of a lot of players who are better than me,” he told the ECB Reporter’s Network.
“There are people with better records with the bat and then there have been some special bowlers at the club over the years.
“There have been so many great players at the club so to receive the support from the people who have obviously enjoyed watching me play and still enjoy watching me play is a great honour.”
As a top-order batsman and former captain, Madsen appreciates Barnett’s record of 53 hundreds and nearly 24,000 runs in first-class cricket for Derbyshire.
“Kim’s stats speaks for themselves, he scored the most runs, the most hundreds and was just an unbelievable player for the county over a long period of time,” he said.
“He is certainly, in my opinion, the best batter for the club. His record is a phenomenal one to have, to score 53 hundreds at the top of the order really is a special record and it’s unique, no one will break that. In my opinion, it will live on forever.”
Although he never saw Taylor in action or played against Cork, now the county’s Twenty20 Head Coach, he knows they were outstanding players.
“Bob was one of the best ‘keepers to live and then Corky was a brilliant all-rounder for the club,” he said.
“The performances they put in for Derbyshire and for England , they were match-winners with incredible records.
“I didn’t see Bob play live but I have seen footage of him keeping and he just looks like a natural behind the stumps. I’ve met him quite a few times and he’s such a great guy as well.
“When I started Corky was just finishing and we didn’t play against each other but I’ve watched a lot of him playing and he was a fierce competitor, you could see that determination to win.”
Looking back on his own Derbyshire career which began in 2009 and currently stands at 10,656 first-class runs including 29 centuries, Madsen selected the 2012 season as one of his highlights.
“Winning Division Two, that certainly stands out,” he said. “What we achieved as a team in that year when we were pretty much underdogs and written off at the beginning of the year, with a young inexperienced squad and I’d just taken over as captain.
“We had a great season, everyone chipped in at various stages and it’s something that will live with me forever. The performances that we had to put in, especially at the beginning when we got on a winning run, make that championship season for me the highlight.
“On a personal level, I would say 2013 in terms of scoring runs consistently and there are a few knocks I look back on. I fondly remember playing Saeed Ajmal in his prime at Worcester on a wicket that was turning, it was a proud moment for me to get a hundred and I think I got 50 in the second innings.
“But if you had to push me for one innings, I would say the 170 at Cheltenham in 2009 in my debut game, purely on what it did in getting me going and helping to almost prove to myself in a way that I deserved to be playing at this level.
“In the last few years, in red-ball cricket I probably haven’t been as consistent as I would have liked, but I really have been blessed to play for as long as I have and hopefully for quite a few more years to come. If I can inspire the next generation and bring joy to people that’s the main thing.”
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