Ashley Harvey-Walker

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Ashley Harvey-Walker (July 21, 1944 – April 28, 1997) was an English cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a right-arm off-break and medium-pace bowler.

Early in his career, Harvey-Walker played for the second XI team of Warwickshire, before switching to the Derbyshire second XI in 1967. In 1971 Harvey-Walker became the first Derbyshire cricketer to score a century on his debut performance, scoring an unbeaten 110^[1].

In a snow-affected match in 1975, Harvey-Walker showed a streak of humour by handing umpire Dickie Bird a suspicious-looking handkerchief, before letting out a yell, complete with gummy grin, of "Catch it", seeing the ball hocked to short-leg.^[2]

Christened Harvey-Whacker by John Arlott, Harvey-Walker came good in an emergency situation in 1978, when, faced with a disintegrating pitch, Harvey-Walker took seven wickets in the innings, his best single-innings return. In the same season, he found himself out of first-class cricket for good. A mere two months before his final game, he was on the losing Benson & Hedges Cup final-reaching Derbyshire side.

Harvey-Walker was a lower-middle-order batsman for the Derbyshire team.

At the age of 52, Harvey-Walker was assassinated in a bar when, while attending a bar in Johannesburg, a gunman walked in, called out Harvey-Walker's name, and shot him when he responded.