Stephen Clifford Gale (born 3 June 1952) 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 and current

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'', ...

. Gale 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

leg break Leg spin is a type of spin bowling in cricket. A leg spinner bowls right-arm with a wrist spin action. The leg spinner's normal delivery causes the ball to spin from right to left (from the bowler's perspective) when the ball bounces on the ...

. He was born in

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to th ...

and educated at the Wakeman Grammar School there.Published under Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Gale made his debut for

in the 1975

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

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 No ...

. Gale 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 Shropshire from 1975 to 1987, which included 108 Minor Counties Championship appearances and 7

MCCA Knockout Trophy The National Counties Cricket Association Knockout Cup was started in 1983 as a knockout one-day competition for the National Counties in English cricket. At first it was known as the ''English Industrial Estates Cup'', before being called the ...

appearances. 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

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...

in the 1976 Gillette Cup. He made 4 further List A appearances, 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 ...

1985 NatWest Trophy The 1985 NatWest Trophy was the 5th NatWest Trophy. It was an English limited overs county cricket tournament which was held between 3 July and 7 September 1985. The tournament was won by Essex who defeated Nottinghamshire by 1 run in the final ...

. In his 5 List A matches, he scored 156 runs at an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

of 31.20, with a high score of 68. This score, his only List A

half century One half ( : halves) is the irreducible fraction resulting from dividing one by two or the fraction resulting from dividing any number by its double. Multiplication by one half is equivalent to division by two, or "halving"; conversely, ...

, came against Yorkshire in the

1984 NatWest Trophy The 1984 NatWest Trophy was an English limited overs county cricket tournament which was held between 4 July and 1 September 1984. The fourth NatWest Trophy tournament, it was won by Middlesex who defeated Kent by 4 wickets in the final at Lord ...

, which was vital a vital contribution to Shropshire's famous victory. He served as Shropshire's club captain in 1985 and also played for

Shrewsbury Cricket Club Shrewsbury Cricket Club is an amateur cricket club in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. Their 1st XI currently plays in the Birmingham and District Premier League Premier Division and their 2nd XI plays in the Shropshire Premier Division. They won the ...

. Gale is currently an umpire, standing in first-class, List A, and

Twenty20 Twenty20 (T20) is a shortened game format of cricket. At the professional level, it was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two teams have a single innin ...

matches.

References

A living legend from portmarnock

External links

Stephen Gale
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 ...

Stephen Gale
at CricketArchive {{DEFAULTSORT:Gale, Stephen 1952 births Living people Cricketers from Shrewsbury English cricketers Shropshire cricketers English cricket umpires