Gerald 'Gerry' Charles Hardstaff (4 February 1940 – 28 March 2015) was an English

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. Hardstaff was a right-handed

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 ...

who bowled right-arm

medium pace Fast bowling (also referred to as pace bowling) is one of two main approaches to bowling in the sport of cricket, the other being spin bowling. Practitioners of pace bowling are usually known as ''fast'' bowlers, ''quicks'', or ''pacemen''. T ...

. He was born at

Crewe Crewe () is a railway town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. The Crewe built-up area had a total population of 75,556 in 2011, which also covers parts of the adjacent civil parishes of Willaston ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...

. Hardstaff made his debut for

in the 1960

Minor Counties Championship The NCCA 3 Day Championship (previously the Minor Counties Cricket Championship) is a season-long competition in England and Wales that is contested by the members of the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), the so-called national cou ...

against the Warwickshire Second XI. Fisher played

Minor counties The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes unde ...

cricket for Cheshire from 1960 to 1978, including 89 Minor Counties Championship matches In 1964, he made his

List A List A cricket is a classification of the limited-overs (one-day) form of the sport of cricket, with games lasting up to eight hours. List A cricket includes One Day International (ODI) matches and various domestic competitions in which the numbe ...

debut against

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

in the

1964 Gillette Cup The 1964 Gillette Cup was the second Gillette Cup, an English limited overs county cricket tournament. It was held between 25 April and 5 September 1964, and was won by the defending champions Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), i ...

. He played three further List A matches for Cheshire, the last of which came against

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...

in the

1968 Gillette Cup The 1968 Gillette Cup was the sixth Gillette Cup, an English limited overs county cricket tournament. It was held between 27 April and 7 September 1968. The tournament was won by Warwickshire County Cricket Club who defeated Sussex County Cricke ...

. In his four List A matches for Cheshire, he scored 45 runs at a

batting average Batting average is a statistic in cricket, baseball, and softball that measures the performance of batters. The development of the baseball statistic was influenced by the cricket statistic. Cricket In cricket, a player's batting average is ...

of 11.25, with a high score of 45. With the ball he took 5 wickets at a

bowling average In cricket, a player's bowling average is the number of runs they have conceded per wicket taken. The lower the bowling average is, the better the bowler is performing. It is one of a number of statistics used to compare bowlers, commonly use ...

of 24.40, with best figures of 4/31. Hardstaff also played two List A matches for Minor Counties North in the

1972 Benson & Hedges Cup The 1972 Benson & Hedges Cup was the first competing of cricket's Benson & Hedges Cup. The competition was won by Leicestershire County Cricket Club. Fixtures and results Group stage Midlands Group Northern Group Southern Group Western G ...

against

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

and

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

. In his two matches for the team he scored 19 runs and took 4 wickets at an average of 13.25, with best figures of 3/39. He died on 28 March 2015 at St Luke's Hospice in

Winsford Winsford is a town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, on the River Weaver south of Northwich and west of Middlewich. It grew around the salt mining industry ...

, Cheshire, following a battle with cancer.

References

External links

Gerry Hardstaff
at

ESPNcricinfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a ...

Gerry Hardstaff
at CricketArchive {{DEFAULTSORT:Hardstaff, Gerry 1940 births 2015 deaths Cricketers from Cheshire Sportspeople from Crewe English cricketers Cheshire cricketers Minor Counties cricketers Deaths from cancer in England