"Definitely not!": Matt Critchley rules out scoring 1,000 runs by the end of May

ELIZABETH BOTCHERBY: Despite a stellar start to the season which has seen him collect 340 runs and 10 wickets in two matches, the Derbyshire allrounder is curbing his expectations – and those of his mum

Matt Critchley is no stranger to breaking records. In his second first-class outing, aged 18 years and 270 days, he struck an unbeaten 137 against Northamptonshire to become Derbyshire’s youngest centurion. It remains a record, and his career high score.

Three years later in September 2018, one month after his 21st birthday, he posted 105 against Middlesex to topple a record held for 90 years by club legend – and 1936 County Championship winner – Stan Worthington: the youngest Derbyshire player to reach three figures at Lord’s.

Two matches into the 2021 season, he’s already added another line to his palmarès, scoring 193 runs and taking eight wickets for 143 against Worcestershire to record the best all-round figures in a single first-class match for the county.  

However, despite his proclivity for writing his name in the history books and the small matter of 340 runs from his first four innings this year, there is one record he insists is out of reach.

It is a feat achieved by just eight players in first-class cricket, and only twice post 1938; a milestone only the great Donald Bradman has passed on multiple occasions; an elite club waiting for its first new member since Graeme Hick in 1988. The players who have scored 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May.

W.G. Grace, Tom Hayward, Wally Hammond, Charlie Hallows, Donald Bradman (twice), Bill Edrich, Glenn Turner, and Graeme Hick. Six Englishmen, an Australian, and a New Zealander. No Derbyshire players at present and, according to Critchley, the county are unlikely to find their maiden inductee in him.

^{Critchley celebrating his century against Durham in July 2017, his second in first-class cricket}

"Definitely not! I thought you were going to say 1,000 runs for the year!" Critchley says, pausing to laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion. "No way I’m scoring 1,000 runs before the end of May… but it would be nice if I could!

"Dave Griffin, our statistician, finds a stat for every single ball of the season, so I take some of them with a pinch of salt. I just try and affect every game I can and see what Griff comes up with. But you never know, I’d be on a good run of form if I can get 1,000."

At present, Critchley has good form in abundance. Braving the elements in Derbyshire’s snowy season opener against Warwickshire, he rescued his side from two poor starts with twin half-centuries and took two first-innings wickets in an even draw at Edgbaston.

Elevated one place up the order to number five to face Worcestershire the following week, he posted his fourth first-class century – 109 off 159 deliveries – in the company of Leus du Plooy and Harvey Hosein and added a further 84 (109 balls) to his total as Derbyshire hunted for a second-innings declaration. With the ball, he took five for 67 and three for 76, including opener Daryl Mitchell and tail-end dangerman Alzarri Joseph as his side bowled against the clock.

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Derbyshire ultimately fell two wickets short of victory, forced instead to settle for a second successive draw which temporarily crushed the humble allrounder’s spirits.

"Obviously, I’m pleased with how I’ve started the season, but I’d rather have had two wins than two draws," he says. "The highs of the game came down pretty quickly when we only managed a draw [against Worcestershire]. It probably took another day to get over that and reflect and be proud of what I did individually and what the team did.

"It’s worth remembering we played the better cricket for the four days and there’s lots of positives to take from it as a team."

However, there’s no hiding his pride in his performance against Worcestershire – even if the applause isn’t entirely universal.

"A hundred and a five-for was something I always wanted to do in my career," he reveals. "I always fancied doing it in a first-class game, so it was nice to tick that one off.

"I phoned my mum on the way home after I got out for 84 in the second innings and she said 'oh, you’ll just have to do it again some time and try to get two hundreds and a five-for in the same game!' I think there’s only about two people who’ve ever done that in first-class cricket, so I don’t think I’ll get the chance." More laughter, another absurd suggestion.

"And the number of people who’ve asked why I didn’t get those extra 16 runs – I tried my best! They did have everyone on the boundary so I might have been able to block my way to a century in four or five overs, I suppose that is a little frustrating."

Of course, there is a second, equally exclusive club where the name 'Matt Critchley' is being whispered with increased zeal. As sure as night follows day, with runs and wickets comes the inevitable England discussion.

Only 24 players have ever made a Test appearance while playing at the Incora County Ground, the most recent being allrounder Dominic Cork, who made his international debut against West Indies in June 1995, 14 months before Critchley was born. He went on to play 37 Test matches and 32 ODIs, all of which came during his 13-year stay at Derbyshire – a huge legacy for Critchley or, as he quickly suggests, another player to continue when the time is right.

"Definitely not! I thought you were going to say 1,000 runs for the year! No way I’m scoring 1,000 runs before the end of May… but it would be nice if I could!"

"Of course, I want to play for England, that’s something I’ve wanted since I was a kid," he says. "There’s not been many picked from Derbyshire, rightly or wrongly, so hopefully I can do that, and we can get a Derbyshire player playing for England.

"We’ve got a few talented lads here so hopefully we can start getting one or two of us at the very least in the squads and the team. But all I can do is put numbers on the board and win as many games for Derbyshire as I can. If it gets me picked, great; if not, good luck to whoever else is doing it."

Listening to Critchley’s mature assessment of his season to date - quiet acknowledgment of his good form tempered with a modest ignorance of the noise building around his name – it is easy to forget he is still only 24 years old and not a seasoned pro accustomed to the limelight.

Rather like England young guns Ollie Pope and Sam Curran, he seems to have been on the county circuit forever, bursting onto the scene as a precocious teen centurion in 2015 before scoring 705 runs and amassing 32 wickets in 2018 – third in the county’s run-scoring charts, second for wickets, a breakthrough season most 22-year-old leggie-allrounders can merely dream of.

Two seasons later in the Bob Willis Trophy, he took a team-leading 17 wickets from 128.4 overs and collected Derbyshire’s only five-wicket haul, further cementing his reputation as the county’s primary spinner.

^{Critchley spinning the ball in the County Championship and Royal London Cup in 2018}

However, growing up on the field hasn’t always been easy. In 2019, he averaged 21.95 with the bat, passing 50 on just three occasions, and averaged 44.26 with the ball, his struggles witnessed on a weekly basis by thousands of fans.

"I played a lot of games when I was pretty young," Critchley recalls. "I got a century in my second match but probably at 19, 20, 21, I wasn’t really ready but was still playing first-class cricket. Whereas other people learned the game at university or in the second team, I did most of my developing on the pitch – and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

"It might not reflect in my stats, they might not be as pretty as other peoples, but I think the past couple of years I’ve been pretty consistent. The 2019 season was pretty disappointing, I don’t think I scored a hundred or took a five-for, but 2020 was a good year. I averaged 40 with the bat, 20-odd with the ball, and took 17 wickets, I think after Simon Harmer I was the leading wicket-taker as a spinner.

"And I think it stands me in good stead for the future. Some people have only played a handful of games or as a spinner you might have been second spinner for a couple of years and when you get to your mid-20s you start taking over. But I’ve been first spinner for a couple of years, so I think playing a bit ahead of schedule when I was younger has helped me develop sooner."

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But, in characteristically level-headed fashion, he refuses to be drawn into speculating about his what lies ahead. Only briefly does his guard come down – letting slip his ambition to achieve a County Championship double -  before quickly recovering his determination to take this season, and his career, one ball at a time.

"It would be nice to score 1,000 runs and take 50 wickets in a season, that’s something I would like to do," he says. "But that’s an outward thing that I can’t control; I just have to focus inwardly on what I can do and hopefully it will contribute towards that.

"I think you can get caught up on not wanting to do badly or pushing to do well. At the end of the day, I try as hard as I can in training and in games and if results don’t go my way or do go my way, I can look at myself and know I tried my best for the team. If I score a hundred, or score a pair, that’s just what it’s meant to be. You can only do the best you can."

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