Mark Alan Ealham (born 27 August 1969) is a former 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, who played

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), ...

and

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 ...

cricket. He played domestic cricket for

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

and

Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Nottinghamshire. The club's limited overs team is called the ...

as an

all-rounder An all-rounder is a cricketer who regularly performs well at both batting and bowling. Although all bowlers must bat and quite a handful of batsmen do bowl occasionally, most players are skilled in only one of the two disciplines and are consi ...

. He retired in September 2009, after 20 seasons in domestic cricket, to take charge of cricket at

King's School, Canterbury The King's School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for 13 to 18 year old pupils) in Canterbury, Kent, England. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the Eton Group. It is Britain's ...

. During his time at King's, he coached several Kent academy players including

Ollie Robinson Oliver Edward Robinson (born 1 December 1993) is an English professional cricketer who plays internationally for the England cricket team, England Test cricket team. In domestic cricket, he represents Sussex County Cricket Club, Sussex, havin ...

Domestic career

Ealham was born in

Willesborough Willesborough is a village, now in effect a residential suburb, on the eastern side of Ashford, Kent, England. The area The South Willesborough Dykes area, on the west bank of the River East Stour, is an area of sheep fields drained by dykes. ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

and began his career with Kent County Cricket Club. His father, Alan Ealham, had spent his entire career with Kent. He made his first-class and

list A cricket 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 ...

debuts for Kent in 1989. Despite his promising Test debut, Ealham was always regarded as a limited-overs specialist. This belief is mainly due to his free-swinging batting style – during a

Twenty20 Cup The T20 Blast, currently named the Vitality Blast for sponsorship reasons, is a professional Twenty20 cricket competition for English and Welsh first-class counties. The competition was established by the England and Wales Cricket Board (E ...

match in 2005 against

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham *County Durham, an English county * Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States *Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...

he scored 45 off 17 balls including 34 runs in a single over. Ealham left Kent before the

2003 season 3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societie ...

and signed a three-year contract with Nottinghamshire, with whom he won the

2005 County Championship The 2005 County Championship season, known as the Frizzell County Championship for sponsorship reasons, was contested through two divisions: Division One and Division Two. Each team played all the others in their division both home and away. The t ...

. Ealham took 56 wickets in 15 Championship matches that season, the most by a Nottinghamshire bowler and the fifth-most in Division One – at an average of 20.80, the fourth-lowest in Division One among bowlers with more than 20 wickets.

International career

Ealham was first called into the England team for the start of

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's tour of England in 1996. His one-day debut came on 23 May in the first one-day international. Although no result was possible due to rain, Ealham impressed as he reached 40 runs. He made his Test debut in the third Test in July. Ealham once again impressed, he scored 51 runs in the first innings and took second-innings bowling figures of 4/21, which he never surpassed at Test level. Ealham made his highest Test score, 53 not out, and took 3-60, in the first Test of the 1997

Ashes series The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. The term originated in a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, ''The Sporting Times'', immediately after Australia's 1882 victory at The Oval, its first Te ...

Edgbaston Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre. In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family an ...

, England's only victory in an Ashes Test that was not a

dead rubber Dead rubber is a term used in sporting parlance to describe a match in a series where the series result has already been decided by earlier matches. The dead rubber match therefore has no effect on the winner and loser of the series, other than the ...

between the 1986-7 and 2005 series. However Ealham was dropped after England fell behind in the fourth Test of that series and only played two more Tests. His greatest performance as a player, however, came in January 2000 when England played

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

in the fifth match of a triangular tournament held in South Africa. Ealham took five wickets for only 15 runs. At the time this was the best bowling performance by an Englishman in a one-day international match ever. Even more remarkable is that all five wickets were LBWs. This is still a record in one-day international cricket.Cricinfo – A legend is born
/ref> Mark Ealham

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ealham, Mark 1969 births Living people People from Willesborough Kent cricketers Nottinghamshire cricketers English cricketers England Test cricketers England One Day International cricketers