Lancashire Cricket celebrates Black History Month: Part 2
This October, Lancashire Cricket is celebrating Black History Month in the UK. This national celebration aims to promote and celebrate Black contributions to British society, and to foster an understanding of Black history in general.
As part of our celebrations, we wanted to recognise some of the most famous black players to have pulled on the Lancashire Cricket and Thunder jerseys throughout history.
Up next, we have a profile on former Lancashire and England all-rounder Phil Defreitas...
Former Lancashire all-rounder Phillip Defreitas played a significant part in the county’s triumphant Kings of One-Day Cricket era. He also holds a remarkable county record which still stands to this very day and will, in truth, take some beating.
Having played for three counties during an illustrious 20-year career from 1985 to 2005, which also saw him represent England 147 times, Daffy - as he remains affectionately known - is still the only bowler to have taken a five-wicket haul or more in first-class cricket against all 18 counties.
There are a host of bowlers who have taken five-fors against 17 counties, including one-club men such as Surrey’s Martin Bicknell and Courtney Walsh for Gloucestershire. But Defreitas stands alone in completing the set.
Lancashire was one of three professional homes for Defreitas, who was born in Dominica before moving to London at the age of 10.
After time on the MCC ground-staff and in the Middlesex age-groups, he signed for Leicestershire before moving to Lancashire, Derbyshire and back to Grace Road, where he captained the side shortly before retirement in 2005.
Defreitas was part of England’s 1992 World Cup team who were beaten by Pakistan at Melbourne. Prior to Eoin Morgan’s side winning the title in 2019, it was arguably the most iconic World Cup, with Defreitas and Neil Fairbrother going toe to toe with Wasim Akram and Pakistan’s Cornered Tigers.
Defreitas was a Lancashire player at that stage, his time at Emirates Old Trafford spanning five seasons between 1989 and 1993.
He signed with the Red Rose as a 23-year-old - a skilful seamer and a hard-hitting lower middle order batter.
Here was someone who had been playing for England for two-and-a-half-years at that stage, and he went on to win the one-day double with Lancashire in the summer of 1990 - the Benson and Hedges Cup and the NatWest Trophy.
They beat Worcestershire by 69 runs at Lord’s in the former, Defreitas hitting 28 and taking two wickets. In the latter, David Hughes’s side beat Northamptonshire by seven wickets. Defreitas was the player of the match thanks to a stunning new ball 5-26 from 12 as Northamptonshire were bowled out for 171.
In all cricket for Lancashire, including friendlies - that was the stage when pre-season tours included matches against the likes of Zimbabwe and Western Australia to name just two, Defreitas took 393 wickets and scored 3,443 runs in 185 matches.
He hit a couple of centuries, 102 and 100 not out, in 1990 against Oxford University and Northamptonshire.
He claimed five wickets or more in an innings on 17 occasions in all cricket for the Red Rose, including a fabulous 7-21 from 10.2 overs in the second innings of a big County Championship win over Middlesex at Lord’s in July 1990. In that match, he and West Indian star Patrick Patterson shared 18 wickets in the match, Daffy taking 10 of them.
They remained his career best figures through to retirement, after which he became a successful schools and junior coach and an highly sought after speaker on the after dinner circuit.
The standout moment of Defreitas’s career will surely be his important role in England’s Ashes series victory Down Under in 1986/87, when he was a Leicestershire player.
He played in four of the five Tests on that tour and claimed nine wickets, adding 77 runs down the order.
He claimed 140 wickets in 44 Tests, scoring four half-centuries, and took 115 wickets in 103 ODIs with one fifty.
If you find his biography on the website cricketspeaker.co.uk, it reads: “A domestic cricket genius, many believe Defreitas did not fulfil his potential in international cricket and suggest he was unable to match his prolific performances in domestic cricket.”
Having said that, his international stats are pretty impressive, with a Test best of 7-70 with the ball and 88 with the bat down the order.
Defreitas left Lancashire to move to Derbyshire at the end of 1993 and ended his career with a return to Leicestershire.
He actually played against Lancashire twice in nine competitive T20 appearances in 2003 and 2004. The latter season, the Foxes won the Twenty20 Cup, though Defreitas didn’t play in the latter stages of the competition.
It was only the second season of T20 cricket in England. Had that format come in maybe 10 years earlier, you can bet your bottom dollar that he would have, well, made a lot of dollars!