Nick Knight

Nick Knight
Personal information
Full name Nicholas Verity Knight
Born (1969-11-28) 28 November 1969
Watford, Hertfordshire, England
Batting style Left-hand bat
Bowling style Right-arm medium
Role Opening batsman, commentator
International information
National side
Test debut 27 July 1995 v West Indies
Last Test 31 May 2001 v Pakistan
ODI debut 29 August 1996 v Pakistan
Last ODI 2 March 2003 v Australia
ODI shirt no. 1
Career statistics
Competition Test ODI FC LA
Matches 17 100 240 414
Runs scored 719 3,637 16,172 13,478
Batting average 23.96 40.41 44.18 38.61
100s/50s 1/4 5/25 40/77 30/68
Top score 113 125* 303* 151
Balls bowled – – 249 90
Wickets – – 1 2
Bowling average – – 271.00 44.50
5 wickets in innings – – 0 0
10 wickets in match – – 0 0
Best bowling – – 1/61 1/14
Catches/stumpings 26/– 44/– 292/– 174/–
Source: ESPNcricinfo, 18 July 2015

Nicholas Verity Knight (born 28 November 1969) is an English cricket commentator and former England cricketer. Knight was given his middle name in honour of the 1930s English Test bowler Hedley Verity who was killed in World War II and is a distant family relation.[1] A left-handed opening batsman and a fine fielder, Knight played in 17 Test Matches and 100 One Day Internationals before announcing his retirement from international cricket after the 2003 World Cup.

Biography

Born in Watford, Hertfordshire, Knight was educated at Felsted School in Essex and Loughborough University and was an outstanding cricketer from an early age. He won the Daily Telegraph 'Young Cricketer of the Year' award in 1989 and he played cricket for Brentwood cricket club in 1989/91. In domestic cricket, he began his career with Essex in 1991 before transferring to Warwickshire four years later. He was captain of Warwickshire from 2003 to 2005, and led them to victory in the County Championship in the 2004 season. He retired from first-class cricket after the 2006 season and is now a member of the Sky Sports cricket commentary team. He finished his career with 16,172 runs at 44.18 and 40 hundreds. His highest score was an unbeaten 303.

Career

Test Cricket

He struggled in the Test arena and made only 1 test century, an innings of 113 vs Pakistan at Headingley in 1996. His next best score was 96 vs Zimbabwe in a drawn game at Bulawayo in 1996–97. The most obvious reason for this was his technique. Never afraid of genuine fast bowling, his footwork was often not decisive enough which caused him at times to appear to be backing away from short balls and his test innings frequently ended giving a catch to the slips or the wicket-keeper. As a fine fielder and a hard worker, it is surprising that he did not play more for England – the England team was not blessed with too many good batsman during Knight's era. However two of the better batsmen were Michael Atherton and Mark Butcher with whom Knight was vying for a place for most of his career. Atherton too was captain of England until 1998 so would have been an automatic choice for opening batsman.

One Day Internationals

Nick Knight commentary at the toss with Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews during England tour in Sri Lanka 2015

Knight was a far more successful, and certainly regular, one-day player for England. In one-day cricket, this backing away in fact helped him score a lot of runs and became something of a hallmark. This same strength/weakness was mirrored in Michael Bevan – one of Knight's contemporaries.

Debuting in 1996, he scored centuries in his second and third innings in ODI cricket, on consecutive days against a Pakistan bowling attack that included Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.Nick Knight set a world record for the highest ever ODI innings by a batsman when carrying his bat through his innings(125*) when he achieved it v Pakistan in 1996 [2] He was also the first Englishman to carry his bat in an ODI innings.

Knight wasn't selected for the World Cup team in 1999 and made his World Cup debut in the 2003 tournament. He performed well in an unsuccessful campaign for England and faced the first delivery in cricket officially to break the 100 mph barrier, bowled by Shoaib Akhtar.[3] He "pushed it nonchalantly to square leg."[4]

One Day International Centuries

ODI Centuries of Nick Knight
Runs Match Against City/Country Venue Year
[1] 113 2  Pakistan Manchester, England Old Trafford 1996
[2] 125* 3  Pakistan Nottingham, England Trent Bridge 1996
[3] 122 17  West Indies Bridgetown, Barbados Kennington Oval 1998
[4] 105 70  India Delhi, India Feroz Shah Kotla 2002
[5] 111* 86  Australia Sydney, Australia Sydney Cricket Ground 2002

Post-Retirement

Following his retirement from cricket, Knight became a commentator and pundit on Sky Sports.

Notes

  1. ↑ Independent newspaper article
  2. ↑ "Records | One-Day Internationals | Batting records | Carrying bat through a completed innings | ESPN Cricinfo". Cricinfo. Retrieved 2017-02-17.
  3. ↑ Selvey, Mike (2010-07-07). "Shaun Tait is certainly very fast, but 100mph?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  4. ↑ Hotten, John. "The fastest bowler? It depends". ESPN Cricinfo. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
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