The 1985 English cricket season was the 86th in which the County Championship had been an official competition. England recovered The Ashes against an Australian team that had lost several players to a "rebel tour" of South Africa. The Britannic Assurance County Championship was won by Middlesex.
England won the Ashes thanks to the batting of Mike Gatting, Tim Robinson and David Gower; and some excellent seam bowling by Richard Ellison. As in 1981, this was another disappointing Australian team, but their recovery was complete by the time of their next visit in 1989.
Cumulative record - Test wins | 1876-1985 |
---|---|
England | 86 |
Australia | 96 |
Drawn | 75 |
Zimbabwe made their second tour of England and played in 8 first-class matches, mostly against county opposition.
Viv Richards of Somerset topped the batting averages with 1836 runs at an average of 76.50.
The leading run scorer was Essex and England batsman Graham Gooch with 2208 runs at 71.22 from 33 innings.
Richard Ellison of Kent and England topped the bowling averages, taking 65 wickets at an average of 17.20.
Worcestershire bowler Neal Radford was the leading wicket taker with 101, at an average of 24.68.
Ian Terence Botham, Baron Botham, is an English cricket commentator, member of the House of Lords, a former cricketer who has been chairman of Durham County Cricket Club since 2017 and charity fundraiser. Hailed as one of the greatest all-rounders in the history of the game, Botham represented England in both Test and One-Day International cricket.
Norman Walter Dransfield Yardley was an English cricketer who played for Cambridge University, Yorkshire County Cricket Club and England, as a right-handed batsman and occasional bowler. An amateur, he captained Yorkshire from 1948 to 1955 and England on fourteen occasions between 1947 and 1950, winning four Tests, losing seven and drawing three. Yardley was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1948 and in his obituary in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, he was described as Yorkshire's finest amateur since Stanley Jackson.
Robert George Dylan Willis was an English cricketer, who represented England between 1971 and 1984. A right-handed fast bowler, Willis is regarded by many as one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time.
John William Hearne was a Middlesex leg-spinning all-rounder cricketer who played from 1909 to 1936, and represented England in 24 Test matches between 1911 and 1926.
Timothy Alan Munton is an English cricketer. He had a long career in county cricket, playing over 500 games combined between first-class and List A, primarily with Warwickshire before ending his career at Derbyshire. He also played two Test matches for England in the 1992 series against Pakistan, and went on a number of England A tours. A medium pace bowler and lower order batsman, cricket writer Colin Bateman stated, "at 6ft 6in, with an ability to make the ball swing, Munton is at his best in English conditions". His time at Warwickshire was a particularly successful one for the club, winning 6 trophies between 1993 and 1995; as a crucial part of that side, Munton was honoured as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1995.
The England cricket team toured Australia during the 1986–87 cricket season for a five-match Test series to contest The Ashes. While in Australia, England also played a number of tour matches against state and representative teams, and competed in two One-Day International (ODI) tournaments. Under the captaincy of Mike Gatting, England retained the Ashes with a 2–1 series win.
Roy Kilner was an English professional cricketer who played nine Test matches for England between 1924 and 1926. An all-rounder, he played for Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 1911 and 1927. In all first-class matches, he scored 14,707 runs at an average of 30.01 and took 1,003 wickets at an average of 18.45. Kilner scored 1,000 runs in a season ten times and took 100 wickets in a season five times. On four occasions, he completed the double: scoring 1,000 runs and taking 100 wickets in the same season, recognised as a sign of a quality all-rounder.
Richard Mark Ellison is an English former cricketer who played in 11 Tests and 14 One Day Internationals (ODIs) from 1984 to 1986, playing a key role in the 1985 Ashes series. He was born in Willesborough in Kent.
George Gibson Macaulay was a professional English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 1920 and 1935. He played in eight Test matches for England from 1923 to 1933, achieving the rare feat of taking a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket. One of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1924, he took 1,838 first-class wickets at an average of 17.64 including four hat-tricks.
Norman George Cowans is a former cricketer who mainly played as a right-arm fast bowler. He was the 500th cricketer to play Test cricket for England, featuring between 1982 and 1985 in 19 Test matches and 23 One Day Internationals. Cowans also played first-class and List A cricket for both Middlesex and Hampshire.
An England team toured Australia between November 1920 and March 1921. The tour was organised by the Marylebone Cricket Club and matches outside the Tests were played under the MCC name. The tour itinerary consisted of 13 first-class matches, including a series of 5 Test matches against Australia in which The Ashes were at stake.
The 1997 cricket season was the 98th in which the County Championship has been an official competition. The season centred on the six-Test Ashes series against Australia. England won the first, at Edgbaston, by the decisive margin of nine wickets, and the rain-affected second Test at Lord's was drawn, but any English optimism was short-lived. Australia won the next three games by huge margins to secure the series and retain The Ashes, and England's three-day victory in the final game at The Oval was little more than a consolation prize. It was the 68th test series between the two sides with Australia finally winning 3-2 The three-match ODI series which preceded the Tests produced a statistical curiosity, with England winning each match by an identical margin, six wickets.
The 1996 English cricket season was the 97th in which the County Championship had been an official competition. England hosted tours by India and Pakistan, who each played three Tests and three ODIs. Against India, England were unbeaten, winning the Test series 1–0 and the ODI series 2–0. However, against the Pakistanis England lost 2–0 in the Tests, and had to console themselves with a 2–1 ODI series victory.
1919 was the 26th season of County Championship cricket in England and the first since 1914. The authorities had doubted if cricket would remain popular after a four-year break and the strain of war. It was decided that County Championship matches should be reduced from three days' duration to two, but cricket had not lost its popularity and the two-day experiment was a failure. Yorkshire finished the season as champions, topping the table by four percentage points. No Test cricket was played but an Australian Imperial Forces team toured England, playing matches from mid-May until mid-September. Andy Ducat, Patsy Hendren, Percy Holmes, Herbert Sutcliffe and Ernest Tyldesley were named in the 1920 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack as the Five Cricketers of the Year for their 1919 performances.
1947 was the 48th season of County Championship cricket in England. It is chiefly remembered for the batting performances of Denis Compton and Bill Edrich who established seasonal records that, with the subsequent reduction in the number of first-class matches, will probably never be broken. Their form was key to their team Middlesex winning the County Championship for the first time since 1921, although they were involved in a tight contest for the title with the eventual runners-up Gloucestershire, for whom Tom Goddard was the most outstanding bowler of the season. Compton and Edrich were assisted by the fact that it was the driest and sunniest English summer for a generation, ensuring plenty of good batting wickets.
John William Lee, generally known as Jack Lee, was an English cricketer who played for Somerset from 1925 to 1936, having played one match for Middlesex in 1923. He was an all-rounder, scoring six centuries and taking ten wickets in a match on two occasions by the end of his career. He was killed on active service with the British Army during the Second World War.
Bernard James Tindal Bosanquet was an English cricketer best known for inventing the googly, a delivery designed to deceive the batsman. When bowled, it appears to be a leg break, but after pitching the ball turns in the opposite direction to that which is expected, behaving as an off break instead. Bosanquet, who played first-class cricket for Middlesex between 1898 and 1919, appeared in seven Test matches for England as an all-rounder. He was chosen as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1905.
Alexandra Hartley is an English former cricketer who played as a left-arm orthodox spin bowler. Between 2016 and 2019, she appeared in 28 One Day Internationals and four Twenty20 Internationals for England, and was part of the side that won the 2017 World Cup. She played domestic cricket for Lancashire, Middlesex, Surrey Stars, Lancashire Thunder, North West Thunder, Manchester Originals and Welsh Fire in England, as well as Tasmania and Hobart Hurricanes in Australia.
Mady Kate Villiers is an English cricketer who plays for the England women's cricket team as an off break bowler. She also plays for Essex, Sunrisers and Oval Invincibles. In July 2019, she was named in England's squad for the Women's Twenty20 International (WT20I) fixtures of the 2019 Women's Ashes series, making her WT20I debut for England against Australia on 31 July 2019.
Charlotte Ellen Dean is an English cricketer who currently plays for Hampshire, Southern Vipers and London Spirit. An all-rounder, she is a right-handed batter and right-arm off break bowler. She made her international debut for the England women's cricket team in September 2021.