On this day in 1951 cricketer, Derek William Randall, was born in Retford, Nottinghamshire. He played first-class cricket for Nottinghamshire, and Test matches and One Day Internationals for England in the late 1970s and 1980s. He learned his cricket at Retford CC, and made his first-class debut for Nottinghamshire against Essex in May 1972, scoring 78 batting at number 8 in the order.

Affectionately known as ‘Arkle’, after the racehorse, he was a determined batsman, who made 174 in the Centenary Test in Melbourne, Australia in 1977, famously doffing his cap to the outstandingly fast-bowler Denniss Lillee, after evading a savage bouncer, ‘No point in hitting me there, mate,’ he joked ‘there’s nothing in it’.  When finally dismissed he left the ground by the wrong gate, and found himself at the Royal enclosure where Queen Elizabeth II was watching the play. ‘She was very nice about it,’ he told the BBC. ‘She smiled. Someone else quickly put me right.’

A Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1980, he compiled 52 centuries in all, and made 209 and 146 in the same game against Middlesex in 1979. He scored 1,000 runs in a season 8 times, and was very popular with the crowds who found his enthusiastic fielding and comic antics entertaining. He retired from first-class cricket in 1993.

24 February, 2019