Nick Knight

Nick Knight

Personal information
Full name	Nicholas Verity Knight
Born	28 November 1969 Watford, Hertfordshire, England
Batting style	Left-hand bat
Bowling style	Right-arm medium
Role	Batsman
International information
National side	England
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
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's middle name was 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, curiously enough, mirrored in Michael Bevan – one of Knight's contemporaries. Whether Knight would have had Bevan's success had he been used in a similar "finishing" position is debatable but Knight could certainly have played more ODIs for England than he did.

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.

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.^[2] He "pushed it nonchalantly to square leg."^[3]

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. Selvey, Mike (2010-07-07). "Shaun Tait is certainly very fast, but 100mph?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
3. Hotten, John. "The fastest bowler? It depends". ESPN Cricinfo. Retrieved 13 October 2015.

External links

• Player profile: Nick Knight from ESPNcricinfo