Surrey stalwart Gareth Batty retired as a professional cricketer last week, transitioning to a full-time Assistant Coach at The Kia Oval.
For a man that first came on to many people’s radar in an England U19s team including Matthew Hoggard, Andrew Flintoff & Owais Shah in 1996, it’s certainly been a long career.
Although he started at Yorkshire, the 43-year-old has spent the majority of his career with Surrey in two spells between 1998 – 2001 & 2009 to the end of the 2021 season, with a lengthy stint at Worcestershire in the middle.
Here we’ll take a look at the numbers that stand out from that career of more than 24 years.
746
An incredible number of professional appearances! These came in the form of 261 first-class matches, 271 List A games and 194 performances in T20 cricket.
20
Batty played 20 times for England, with 9 Tests, 10 ODIs and 1 T20I. The bulk of his Tests came between 2003 and 2005 before a recall in 2016 as a 39-year-old for his final two appearances. All of his ODIs came sporadically between 2002 and 2009 while his only T20I was in 2009. Batty never played an international match in the UK.
1092
A 1000 career wickets is a rare milestone for any bowler and Batts passed that total thanks to 682 wickets in first-class cricket, 255 in List A cricket and 155 in T20 matches.
10,043
While Batty ended his career in the tail, he spent a lot of time higher up the order earlier in his career as a genuine all-rounder. Between 2002 and 2011, he regularly scored between 400 and 600 first-class runs, topping out at 744 in 2006.
8/64
His career-best first-class figures came against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in 2019. On what very much became a spinner’s wicket in the second innings, Batty bowled almost half of the overs and took eight of the nine wickets that fell in the innings of 166, denied the full sweep by one Matt Dunn effort and the declaration before the final pair.
3
The number of first-class centuries with the bat he has to his name. The only one of those three to come for Surrey was against Hampshire in 2016 with an unbeaten stand of 222 with Ben Foakes, when he made 110. Three is also the number of seasons Batty was Club captain of Surrey between 2015 and 2017.
114
Batty is Surrey’s joint all-time leading wicket taker in T20 history alongside Jade Dernbach. His 114 wickets have come in 144 matches with best bowling figures of 4/13. He skippered the team to the 2020 Vitality Blast final before defeat to Nottinghamshire.
