Richard Claude Cooper (9 December 1945 – 14 March 1990) played

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 ...

for

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

in the

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 ...

between 1967 and 1989 and had one season as a

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 ...

er for

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

in 1972. He appeared in just one first-class match, but had a much longer career in

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 ...

for Wiltshire, Somerset and Minor Counties representative teams. He was born at

Malmesbury Malmesbury () is a town and civil parish in north Wiltshire, England, which lies approximately west of Swindon, northeast of Bristol, and north of Chippenham. The older part of the town is on a hilltop which is almost surrounded by the up ...

, Wiltshire and died suddenly of a heart attack at

Crudwell Crudwell is a village and civil parish in north Wiltshire, England. The nearest towns are Malmesbury, about to the south-west, and Cirencester, Gloucestershire to the north-east. Also to the north-east is Cotswold Airport. Kemble village, abou ...

, Wiltshire. Cooper was a burly, hard-hitting right-handed middle-order batsman and an irregular right-arm medium-pace bowler whose physique and style brought comparisons with

Colin Milburn Colin Milburn (nicknamed Ollie; 23 October 1941 – 28 February 1990) was an English cricketer, who played in nine Test cricket, Test matches for England cricket team, England, before an accident led to the loss of much of his sight and prompted ...

. He played for Wiltshire from 1967 and in 1970 made two centuries in the match against Somerset's Second Eleven in the

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 ...

. He was then recruited to the first-class game by Somerset for the 1972 season. Business commitments restricted his first-class appearances for Somerset to just one, in which he scored only four runs, but he played fairly regularly in List A cricket and an innings of 95 in his first

Benson and Hedges Cup The Benson & Hedges Cup was a one-day cricket competition for first-class counties in England and Wales that was held from 1972 to 2002, one of cricket's longest sponsorship deals. It was the third major one-day competition established in Englan ...

game, against the Minor Counties, won him the Gold Award for the match.

Wisden ''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 ...

noted that he showed "flair and temperament" and that he "proved to be a composed, powerful straight hitter in the one-day games". However, in 1973 he remained in Somerset's second team, making no first-team appearances, and following a further unproductive year in 1974 he returned to Wiltshire. As a Minor Counties player, he appeared in representative sides in the major List A competitions in 1975 and 1976, and again for Wiltshire between 1983 and 1989. In Minor Counties cricket, he scored more than 5000 runs for Wiltshire and was captain of the side right up to 1989, the season before his early death.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, Richard 1945 births 1990 deaths English cricketers Somerset cricketers Wiltshire cricketers Minor Counties cricketers Wiltshire cricket captains Sportspeople from Malmesbury Cricketers from Wiltshire