Posted by Kent’s Darren Stevens has been making some incredible things happen in recent years. This season in particular. In fact he’s now reached a point where he is making bonkers things happen even when he’s no longer in the middle.
If you don’t already know what happened today, 45-year-old Darren Stevens walked in at 80-5 and promptly hit 15 sixes en route to 190 off 149 balls.
The next thing that happened was in its own weird way even more brilliant – albeit it was only possible thanks to Stevens’ perfectly insensible contribution.
Stevens’ innings came to a close when he holed out aiming yet another tonk over the ropes. His dismissal ended a partnership with Miguel Cummins that was worth 166.
Of these 166 runs, Cummins contributed 1.
Now that is clearly a magnificent thing in its own right. 190 off 149 balls is a magnificent thing; playing that innings from 80-5 is a magnificent thing; and somehow engineering a 166-run partnership in which your batting partner makes just one run is also a magnificent thing.
But it gets better. At this point, Kent’s number 11 Matthew Quinn walked in and hit his very first ball for six.
So what we have here is Miguel Cummins, surviving batsman from a recently-completed 166-run partnership, finding himself in a position where his new partner has six times as many runs as he does after just one ball.
Cricket.
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Darren Sammy’s surely on the way out, right?
While there are first class cricketers older than me, I can still cling to my youth. Long live King Darren.
And now he’s taking wickets!
Is it still cricketers plural?
Yes, just about
Who’s second-oldest?
Why doesn’t someone maintain a list?
The oldest player in first-class cricket was the Governor of Bombay, Raja Maharaj Singh, aged 72 years 192 days when he batted, scoring 4, on the opening day of the match played on 25-27 Nov 1950 at Bombay for his XI v. Commonwealth XI.
That isn’t an answer. Some of us here are gravely concerned that Stevens’ eventual retirement will render us ‘older than all current first-class cricketers’.
Gareth Berg is 40, Tim Murtagh and Michael Hogan 39. I’m not aware of anyone in-between, leastways in county cricket.
Disappointing. (But thank you nevertheless.)
I did find an almost 52 year old who played a T20I (for Luxembourg) this week.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/player/tony-whiteman-520557
Gareth Batty is 43, is he still a thing?
Sort of?
He’s still in Surrey’s squad (and 3 and a bit months older than me). But he hasn’t played proper cricket in two years.
I forgot about Rikki Clarke too, but he’s only 39.
I got a whole year older this week, and all this is making me feel quite young.
With all due respect, you millennial lot are, like, soooo cheugy.
Stop going on about age.
No
One
Cares.
Statistician Rick Finlay tweeted this great stat:
Innings played by 45+year-olds in English first-class cricket since 1990:
0 0 0 0 0 0* 0* 0* 0* 0* 0* 0* 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2* 2* 3* 3* 4 4* 5 5 5 5* 6 6* 6* 6* 7* 7* 9 12 13 13* 14* 18 190
Marvellous.
45+ year olds were clearly “due”
When I adopted Kent a few weeks ago, I had remarked that there is no way to go but up. Of course, I meant that in a philosophical sense rather than silly material objectives like moving up the points table.
I can now confidently declare that I am fully satisfied with the developments.
TWO articles from KC in a day! This is what Darren Stevens can do and its incredible.
I know this is a non-sequitur but you’re all bound to like this. Not least for the strong Lawrence Elderbrook vibes in the “match reports”. Too much mention of the cricket in them though. Yet simultaneously, not quite enough:
https://wisden.com/stories/exclusive/the-adrian-shankar-files/the-adrian-shankar-files-part-two-the-mongoose-connection/amp?__twitter_impression=true
I went to the same uni as Adrian Shankar, in the same year, to read the same subject. But I have no recollection of the chap to regale you with. Not that I can remember anything about most of my fellow students, to be honest – too many of them, and mostly too samey. I reckon his ability to blend in with surroundings might have been a benefit in what he pulled off, or failed to pull off, but who knows. Fascinating story, about which quite a lot of stuff has spread over the internet before then mysteriously disappeared, presumably due to some kind of legality-enforced clean-up. The only weirder story/rumour in English county cricket that I can recall from recent years, and which also has bubbled around – and often been wiped from – the internet, is one I think I probably can’t go into too much detail about for legal or privacy reasons, was a tall tale involving stunning estate agents, an empty house for sale, “misread intentions” and, as it turned out, not a single iota of truthfulness.
One of the great avatars Anon.
The tale involving Estate Agents and not a single iota of truthfulness…
…reminds me of a section in Gamesmanship by Stephen Potter, in which he (fictionally) describes commissioning a piece of research seeking examples of gamesmanship in cricket, only to realise very early in the research that a far more meaningful research brief would be a search for examples of cricket being played where there was an absence of gamesmanship.
So if you, Anon, have any tales of Estate Agents which actually DO contain an iota of truthfulness, please cast aside concerns about privacy, the law etc – I’d love to read rare beans of that kind being spilled.