Richard Daft — Nottinghamshire's Next Great Batsman Makes His First-Class Debut, 1858

Nottinghamshire's cricketing tradition — the Trent Bridge pitch, the forward-play style, the professional culture — was the deepest in England outside Surrey. Daft was its finest product of the generation after Clarke and Parr.

Richard Daft was born at Nottingham in November 1835 into a cricketing family — his father was a local club player and his uncle had played for Nottinghamshire. He learned cricket on the Nottingham Forest ground and made his first-class debut at Trent Bridge in 1858, scoring 40 and impressing observers with the elegance of his off-side play. By 1860 he was a regular in the Nottinghamshire XI alongside Parr; by 1864 he was the more consistent performer and effectively the county's number one. He scored 9,788 first-class runs at 25.39 — exceptional for the overarm era on uncovered pitches — with a highest of 161 not out. His *Kings of Cricket* (1893), a memoir of his contemporaries, is one of the best accounts of Victorian professional cricket. He was also a useful right-arm medium bowler, taking 222 first-class wickets. He died at Radcliffe on Trent in 1900.