David Myrton Archer (20 August 1931 – 24 October 1992) was a West Indian

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er and

umpire An umpire is an official in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The term derives from the Old French nonper, ''non'', "not" and ''per'', ...

. He played

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

for the

Windward Islands french: Îles du Vent , image_name = , image_caption = ''Political'' Windward Islands. Clockwise: Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada. , image_alt = , locator_map = , location = Caribbean SeaNorth ...

but is best known for standing in 28

Test Test(s), testing, or TEST may refer to: * Test (assessment), an educational assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities Arts and entertainment * ''Test'' (2013 film), an American film * ''Test'' (2014 film), ...

matches in the West Indies between 1981 and 1992.

Career

Born in

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). ...

, Archer was a right-hand

batsman In cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the ball with a bat to score runs and prevent the loss of one's wicket. Any player who is currently batting is, since September 2021, officially referred to as a batter (historically, the ...

and slow left-arm bowler. In a club match in Barbados he took 17 wickets, including all ten in one innings. He made three first-class appearances for the Windward Islands. The first came against the touring Australians of 1964–65, when batting at number eleven he scored 11

not out In cricket, a batter is not out if they come out to bat in an innings and have not been dismissed by the end of an innings. The batter is also ''not out'' while their innings is still in progress. Occurrence At least one batter is not out at t ...

and bowled 10 wicketless overs conceding 50 runs. He played a single match in each of the following two seasons without great success. Archer took up umpiring, and in February 1976 umpired his maiden first-class game, between

and

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

. Five years later he made the step up to international level in a

One Day International A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...

between

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

. Later on during England's tour he stood in his first Test. As well as umpiring in West Indian domestic cricket, Archer also umpired ten matches in England during the 1982

County Championship The County Championship (referred to as the LV= Insurance County Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It bec ...

. Archer was selected as the West Indian representative for the 1987 World Cup staged in Asia. He stood in five matches in the tournament, which was the first major trial of neutral umpires.Obituaries in 1992

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

, retrieved on 18 January 2009. His final international umpiring appearance came in April 1992 when he stood in South Africa's first Test back after re-admission, the first-ever Test between South Africa and West Indies.West Indies v South Africa, South Africa in West Indies 1991/92
CricketArchive, retrieved on 18 January 2009. Archer was also a

publican In antiquity, publicans (Greek τελώνης ''telōnēs'' (singular); Latin ''publicanus'' (singular); ''publicani'' (plural)) were public contractors, in whose official capacity they often supplied the Roman legions and military, managed the ...

who ran the Umpires Inn in Barbados. Six months after his last Test match he died in hospital in Barbados after a short illness.

References

External links

Cricinfo Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Archer, David 1931 births 1992 deaths Windward Islands cricketers Barbadian cricket umpires Barbadian cricketers West Indian Test cricket umpires West Indian One Day International cricket umpires