The A-Z of Derbyshire cricket - D is for Di Venuto: Michael Di Venuto

Michael Di Venuto

Choosing the best player whose surname begins with the letter D is, like many of the others, a fairly difficult task, but after a little thought I came down to a top three with which I am quite comfortable.

It was difficult to omit Phillip De Freitas. He had made his name at Leicestershire and Lancashire before joining the county, but was a fine player for several seasons. A fast-medium bowler who could trouble the best, as one would expect with someone of his international experience, De Freitas was also a brilliant fielder and an explosive hitter who could turn a game in a short time.

While at times giving the impression, rightly or wrongly, that he wasn’t in the mood, ‘Daffy’ at his best was a very fine player who, with Dominic Cork, gave us two quality all-round cricketers in the lower middle order.

The same goes for Kevin Dean. At his best an excellent left-arm swing bowler, Dean looked like he was set for the very top when he first emerged, but injuries truncated his career. Although he was always capable of golden spells, they became more sporadic and his early retirement came as no surprise.

My third place, however, goes to long-time wicket-keeper George Dawkes, who was a fixture in the side, missing very few matches, from the Second World War to 1961. Tall for a wicket-keeper, Dawkes was nonetheless agile and had an excellent pair of hands. He took over a thousand victims, 254 of them catches from the bowling of Les Jackson. He held every catch in Jackson’s hat-trick against Worcestershire in 1958 and was a hard-hitting batsman who often enlivened an innings.

My number two, George Davidson, was one of the best of the county’s early professionals. Anyone who has read the memoirs of Levi Wright will know that Davidson was a mercurial character with a sharp tongue and an unerring ability to rub people up the wrong way. Wright’s wonderfully entertaining stories portray the Derbyshire dressing room of the time as not especially harmonious, but things were generally overlooked because Davidson was such a fine player.

On 43 occasions he took five wickets in an innings, ten times taking ten in a match with a best of 9-39. 621 wickets at 18 is indicative of a bowler of some talent, but it is the player’s batting skills that have earned him lasting recognition. 5500 runs at just under 24 isn’t spectacular, but on the wickets of the time Davidson was regarded as one of the top all-rounders. He hit three centuries, the highest of which saw him make 274 against Lancashire that remains the county record individual score. Even on this occasion Davidson’s stubbornness shone through, as he refused to give his wicket away or accelerate, which led to a game that we had dominated ending in a draw.

He died tragically young, at the age of 32 from pneumonia, but left his mark on the county and took a lot of replacing, the sure sign of a good player.

Which links neatly into my number one, and the outstanding Michael Di Venuto. Some may argue that we never replaced Diva and the decision to let our best batsman and fans favourite go still rankles, especially when the one-dimensional Travis Birt was preferred to him. The decision was perhaps brought on by Di Venuto’s back problems of the time, but it revealed an alarming lack of foresight, as has so often been the preserve of Derbyshire over the years.

This was the same county that failed to check Allan Lamb’s credentials to play as an Englishman when he was in our Second XI, and that cancelled the registration of Peter Kirsten when, had they simply retained it, they could have had him back with another overseas star after he had taken a season’s break from the game.

Di Venuto was a class act at county level. He was the rock around which Durham’s batting was built for several seasons and played all forms of the game with equal skill and panache. His Italian passport was an asset to them, and he was one of the best batsmen of his generation.

He was unfortunate in that, being at his peak at the same time as many other top Australians in a vintage era. Otherwise Michael would have doubtless translated his talent to the international arena and been admired by a wider audience. A first-class average of 47 suggests that he should have played more international cricket, but Australia’s loss was very much Derbyshire and Durham’s gain.

A brilliant fielder, especially at slip, Di Venuto was also one of the ‘nice guys’ of the game. In many ways he is the antithesis of George Davidson, by all accounts a curmudgeon, who on one recorded occasion reduced a team mate to tears…

Best D? Definitely Diva.