Mervyn Kitchen

Mervyn Kitchen

Personal information
Full name	Mervyn John Kitchen
Born	(1940-08-01) 1 August 1940 Nailsea, Somerset, England
Batting style	Left-handed
Bowling style	Right-arm medium
Role	Umpire, Batsman
Domestic team information
Years	Team
1960–1979	Somerset
First-class debut	28 May 1960 Somerset v Middlesex
Last First-class	23 June 1979 Somerset v Cambridge University
List A debut	22 May 1963 Somerset v Glamorgan
Last List A	17 June 1979 Somerset v Essex
Umpiring information
Tests umpired	20 (1990–2000)
ODIs umpired	28 (1983–2001)
Career statistics
Competition First-class List A Matches 354 172 Runs scored 15230 3388 Batting average 26.25 22.43 100s/50s 17/68 1/12 Top score 189 116 Balls bowled 181 125 Wickets 2 5 Bowling average 54.50 19.40 5 wickets in innings 0 0 10 wickets in match 0 n/a Best bowling 1/4 2/34 Catches/stumpings 157/– 52/–
Source: CricketArchive, 10 October 2009

Mervyn John Kitchen (born 1 August 1940), is a former English first-class cricketer and international umpire.^[1] In his playing days he was a left-handed batsman for Somerset County Cricket Club, making 15,230 runs in his 354 first-class games between 1960 and 1979. He topped the Somerset averages in 1966 and 1968. After retiring as a player he went on to become a first-class cricket umpire and he umpired in 20 Test matches and 28 One-Day Internationals before retiring from that at the age of 65 in 2005.

Background and early cricket career

Kitchen was born in Nailsea, Somerset where his father played local club cricket.^[2] He was educated locally at Backwell Secondary Modern School. He joined the playing staff at Somerset County Cricket Club as a 16-year-old in 1957 and appeared in the next three seasons for the county's second eleven in Minor Counties matches and, from 1959, in games in the newly-constituted Second Eleven Championship.^[3][4]

He made his debut for the Somerset first eleven in 1960 as a middle-order batsman, but made little impact in that or the next season, and in 1962 and 1963, although he played in around half of Somerset's first-class matches, his batting average was below 20 and his place was often dependent on injuries to other players. At this stage in his career, he was primarily a defensive batsman "which suited neither his temperament, for he was not a selfish man, nor his technique", according to one history of Somerset cricket.^[5] He played in most of Somerset's matches in the 1964 season and finally averaged more than 20 runs per innings, but returned to inconsistent performances and an uncertain place in the team in 1965.^[6]

Somerset regular

At the end of the 1965 season, Peter Wight, who had been a fixture in the Somerset side since 1955, batting at No 3, but whose form had declined markedly in the previous three seasons, was not re-engaged for the following year. The resulting vacancy in the Somerset batting line-up in 1966 was filled by Kitchen and he responded with his most successful season, finishing top of the county's batting averages with 1422 runs in all first-class matches.^[6] The batting style had changed as well, and Kitchen was a much more attacking player than he had been, exemplified by an innings in July in a non-first-class match against the International Cavaliers team at Bath, where he won the match by hitting both of the last two balls of a 38-over match from the South African Test bowler Neil Adcock for six.^[7] After this innings, Kitchen became a much more confident batsman and in the space of just over a week at the end of the season he made his first two first-class centuries and was awarded his county cap: "Until then in 142 innings he had not scored a century and had averaged under 20," says the history of Somerset cricket.^[5]

Umpiring

Personal life

References

Persondata
Name	Kitchen, Mervyn
Alternative names
Short description	English cricketer
Date of birth	1 August 1940
Place of birth	Nailsea, Somerset
Date of death
Place of death