Derek Underwood, one of Test and first-class cricket’s all-time leading wicket-takers, has died aged 78.
Underwood, who retired in 1987 and played his last Test in 1982, still ranks sixth among Test wicket-takers for England and is the leading spinner on that list.
He also ranks 14th all-time for first-class wickets and here, the PA news agency looks at his career record.
First-class recordUnderwood took 2,465 first-class wickets in a 25-year career with Kent and England spanning 676 matches.
That ranks him comfortably inside the top 20 in the game’s history, while his wickets came at an average of 20.28.
While that excellent mark is actually bettered by most of those ahead of him, on a list headed by fellow slow left-armer Wilfred Rhodes’ 4,204 wickets at 16.72, Underwood’s economy rate of 2.14 runs an over is the best of the many spinners in that group and trails only Derek Shackleton and Maurice Tate.
He took 100 wickets in his debut first-class season in 1963 – becoming the youngest bowler to do so, only turning 18 in June of that summer.
Nicknamed “Deadly”, he had career-best figures of nine for 28 and was noted for his match-winning spells – particularly on damp pitches, such as his seven for 50 in a 1968 Test against Australia at the Oval and eight for nine against Sussex five years later.
Though not noted for his batting, he recorded a solitary first-class century in 1984, aged 39. Sussex were again the opponents as he nudged his way to 111 in a tied game. He added just two half-centuries in 710 innings.
A further 411 matches in List A cricket, with 572 wickets at 19.40, took him beyond 1,000 matches and 3,000 wickets in his career.
England recordNo other England spinner has taken as many Test wickets as Underwood’s 297, in 86 games between 1966 and 1982.
His wickets came at an average of 25.84, with his best innings and match figures both coming against Pakistan in August 1974 with eight for 51 in the second innings and 13 for 71 in the match.
James Anderson and Stuart Broad have broken new frontiers for England in recent years, with 700 and 604 wickets respectively, but only three other bowlers have exceeded Underwood’s tally.
Lord Ian Botham took 383 between 1977 and 1992, Bob Willis took 325 and Fred Trueman 307.
Graeme Swann is Underwood’s nearest challenger among England spinners, taking his 255 wickets in just 60 matches but at an average over four runs higher than Underwood’s.
Underwood ranks 38th on the all-time Test wicket list and is in the top 10 among spinners, a list headed by Sri Lanka great Muttiah Muralitharan’s record 800 and Shane Warne’s 708 for Australia.
Anil Kumble took 619 for India, Australia’s Nathan Lyon and India’s Ravichandran Ashwin are over 500 and Rangana Herath and Harbhajan Singh broke the 400 barrier. Daniel Vettori (362) and Lance Gibbs (309) are the others ahead of Underwood.
On the spinning pitches of India, Underwood edges out Australia’s Richie Benaud as the leading visiting spinner with 54 wickets.
Underwood also played 26 one-day internationals, taking 32 wickets at 22.93 with a best of four for 44 against the West Indies.
IPL: Salt stars as KKR get back to winning ways
Phil Salt inspired Kolkata Knight Riders to get back to winning ways in the Indian Premier League as they beat Delhi Capitals with an emphatic seven-wicket victory.
The Capitals had surpassed 220 runs in each of their last two matches, but their chances of doing so again were dented early on, Prithvi Shaw walking for 13 before the in-form Jake Fraser-McGurk followed before the end of the third over, his flat drive being taken by Venkatesh Iyer near the boundary for 12.
Varun Chakaravarthy posted figures of 3-16 as Kolkata prevented their visitors from mounting any kind of response, with only Kuldeep Yadav's unbeaten 35 off 26 balls helping them crawl beyond the 150 mark and finish their innings on 153-9.
Salt started brilliantly for Kolkata, plundering his way to a half-century within the first six overs of the chase. He was bowled by Axar Patel, but only after the openers had raced to 79-0, with Sunil Narine and Rinku Singh dismissed shortly after.
Shreyas and Venkatesh Iyer ticked off the remaining runs with ease, securing the win for Kolkata with 21 balls left.
Data Debrief: A sprinkle of Salt
England all-rounder Will Jacks smashed an unbeaten century off just 41 balls to propel Royal Challengers Bangalore to victory over Gujarat Titans on Sunday, and his compatriot Salt followed up with a stunning knock this time around.
He reached 52 in just 26 balls, with a further two boundaries taking him to 60 and seeing Kolkata reach 79 by the end of the powerplay. His knock included seven fours and five sixes.
Tape ball programme can help England find unorthodox talent – Richard Gould
The England and Wales Cricket Board hopes to unearth a new seam of talent beyond the game’s traditional league structure with a national tape ball scheme that allows players to thrive without “whites, willow and leather”.
The practice of using a soft ball wrapped in electrical tape to aid swing and variable bounce is a common one in Asia, where it has helped produce express pace bowlers like Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi and spinners such as Rashid Khan and Shakib-al-Hasan, but has been slow to enter the mainstream conversation in the United Kingdom.
The Chance to Shine charity has long pioneered tape ball cricket as part of its engagement hubs and now, with the ECB keen to live up to its lofty aspiration of becoming the most inclusive team sport in the country, it is at the heart of a new core cities programme designed to engage ‘diverse communities in urban areas’.
Speaking at a launch event where games were hosted in a warehouse space in Birmingham, ECB chief executive Richard Gould was optimistic about reaching out to those with an interest in cricket but limited access to the pavilions and prepared pitches in the club setup.
“We talk about clubs with picket fences around them. In the past that has been seen as the preserve of the ECB. We’ve missed a complete trick on that,” he said.
“When we talk about the recreational game we’re not just talking about Premier League clubs and village cricket clubs now. We’re talking about all forms of cricket that take place.
“You can play the game anywhere, any time, with anybody, in any environment you want. You don’t have to have whites, willow and leather to do it. You can just pick up a bat and a ball and have some fun.”
As well as fulfilling its remit of reaching out to all comers at a grassroots level, Gould also believes there are benefits to finding cricketers with different styles who have learned the game outside the traditional, private-school heavy pathways.
“Without doubt there are,” he said. “We have to get out and try to find the talent. More to the point, we have to try and find talent in areas that we haven’t normally looked for it.
“I do think county pathways will be looking to make sure they don’t miss out on this talent. It’s just about punching through all of our normal procedures and finding ways to both get people in the game and unearthing that talent which may be unorthodox and great.”
Meg Lanning: Exercise obsession and not enough fuel led to Australia retirement
Former Australia captain Meg Lanning revealed her “obsession” with exercise and not eating enough precipitated her surprise international retirement late last year.
Lanning was at the helm of one of the most dominant eras the sport has ever seen but she missed last year’s Ashes for medical reasons and pulled the plug on her Australia career in November.
She opened up about her hidden health issues on the Howie Games podcast, explaining that running up to 90 kilometres a week coupled with eating two small meals a day led to her dropping from 64kg to 57kg.
View this post on Instagram“I was over-exercising and under-fuelling,” the 32-year-old said. “It wasn’t a physical thing. I’ve always been really physically active and liked that side of it, but it became a bit of an obsession.
“I’d maybe eat a couple of meals a day if I was lucky but they weren’t significant. Initially it didn’t start off as a deliberate thing, it just became a bit of a new normal.
“But it slowly crept into conscious decisions because essentially I felt good.
“I wasn’t getting injured like everybody was telling me I was going to do. It sort of just spiralled and I was in denial, even though everybody kept telling me something wasn’t quite right.
“I was not in a place to be able to go on tour and play cricket and give the commitment levels that were required for that Ashes series, mentally and physically.”
Lanning, who led Australia to five World Cup titles in total and Commonwealth Games glory in 2022, said her struggle was not officially diagnosed as an eating disorder.
“It wasn’t labelled as that but I was exercising a lot and I wasn’t eating enough to fuel that – it was a bit out of whack,” Lanning said.
“It was a bit of control because I felt very out of control with what my future looked like. I felt like I was in control of that and that made me feel better.”
Lanning sought help from medical professionals after also struggling with insomnia and continues to play domestically, while she has been signed for London Spirit for The Hundred this year.
“I dreaded night time because I knew I would go to bed and not be able to sleep,” she said. “That would make me so mad. I would just get more angry with myself. If you can’t sleep, you can’t do anything.
“I feel like I’m in a good spot now. Cricket is still part of what I do. But I wasn’t cut out for the international touring schedule and what came with all of that.”
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