Ryan Driver

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ryan Driver England (Eng)

Batting style	Left-handed batsman
Bowling type	Right arm medium
	First-class	List A
Matches	25	22
Runs scored	686	273
Batting average	18.54	13.65
100s/50s	0/2	0/2
Top score	64	61*
Balls bowled	722	354
Wickets	14	2
Bowling average	29.14	161.50
5 wickets in innings	1	0
10 wickets in match	0	N/A
Best bowling	5-70	1-17
Catches/stumpings	13/0	1/0
Debut: 25 June 1996 Last appearance: 28 August 2003 Source: Cricinfo

Ryan Craig Driver (born 30 April 1979) is an English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Worcestershire and Lancashire around the turn of the 21st century.

Driver was born in Truro, Cornwall, and made his first List A appearance for his home-county club against Warwickshire in the 1996 NatWest Trophy. It proved a dismal opening to his career in major cricket, as he was run out for nought. He also played a few minor games for Cornwall that season, as well as appearing several times for Derbyshire's Second XI and once for Somerset's seconds.

In 1997 he joined Worcestershire, but played only a handful of second-team games. 1998 brought him his first-class debut against Durham, but he failed in both innings (making 5 and 0) and had to wait until the middle of 1999 for another chance. In this game, against the New Zealanders, Driver again failed twice with 8 and 18, and once more he returned to the seconds. He did, however, play one National League and two County Championship game at the end of the season, his only score of note being the 42 he made against Essex.

Driver at last got a run in the Worcestershire side in 2000, but failed to make the most of it. In 20 first-class innings he averaged under 24, while in one-day cricket he averaged under 20. He did manage to make his career-best first-class and List A scores within a few days of each other in mid-June: 64 against Sussex in the Championship, then 61 not out against Gloucestershire in the NatWest Trophy; the latter performance won him the man-of-the-match award. 2000 also brought Driver his first wickets both at first-class level (Paul Johnson) and in List A games (Warren Hegg).

For 2001 he moved to Lancashire in the hope of finding a regular first-team place, and an unbeaten 179 for the seconds in early May was sufficient to give him his opportunity. However, a total of 47 runs in five first-class innings saw him dropped until he hit 222 not out for the second team in late July and was recalled for the Championship match against Glamorgan at Colwyn Bay. In this he failed, making only 9 and 2; that proved his last first-class game of the season, although he did make a single Norwich Union League appearance in September.

2002 was nearly as dispiriting for Driver as had been the preceding summer. He played only five first-class games, the same as in 2001, and although he hit 25* against Durham UCCE and 56 against Kent he then endured a sequence of 1, 5, 5, 16*, 0 and 5. In the one-day game his form was, if anything, worse, as he hit just 30 runs in four innings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was dropped, never to return to the Lancashire side, and he ended a couple of years to forget with overall averages for the county of a mere 14.71 in first-class cricket and a dire 6.50 in the one-day format.

After leaving Lancashire, Driver returned to playing for Cornwall where he continued until 2005, and at this level he had considerably more success with the bat, hitting four centuries in two years in the Minor Counties Championship as well as a number of fifties. He played two List A games in 2003 in the C&G Trophy, the second of these (and Driver's last appearance in major cricket) coming in Amstelveen against the Netherlands; he made 18 and took the wicket of Tjade Groot.

Also in 2005, Driver started work as a teacher at a Jersey school, and played club cricket for an island team, Romerils. ^[1] He appeared for the Jersey cricket team against Guernsey in the annual insular tournament, and in 2006 was named as coach for Jersey's first competitive international tournament when the island competed in the European Cricket Council Division II Championship in Scotland. ^[2] Driver was unable to play in the competition himself as he did not satisfy the eligibility criteria, having not been resident in Jersey for long enough, but he intends to qualify in time for the 2008 tournament.