Derbyshire Legends 10 - John Morris (1964 - )

With a new season around the corner, the time is right to continue the series on the finest players to wear Derbyshire colours and it is apposite to make the first one of 2009 the current Derbyshire coach.

It was patently obvious when John Morris first appeared for Derbyshire that he was a player out of the ordinary. Having been brought up on what my Dad always called "Nudgers and Fudgers", it was refreshing to see a young Derbyshire player who was not afraid to hit the ball and who played many of his best shots in front of the wicket. On his day he looked as good as anyone around and it was inevitable that international honours would come his way.

Yet John Morris will ultimately go down in history as a man who didn't quite make the most of his talent. His three Tests saw him average just over 23 while eight one day internationals produced a similar return. Like Kim Barnett, he was deserving of greater opportunity but did himself no favours with the infamous Tiger Moth episode on the Australian tour of 1990-91. He returned from the tour effectively written off as a maverick, but Morris was to play innings of brilliance on a regular basis for another decade before his retiral in 2001.

Sadly, a number of these were played for Durham from 1993 and then for Nottinghamshire. Morris became disaffected with the Derbyshire dressing room and it became patently obvious that he was going to leave. I recall a Sunday fixture at Derby when he was captain for the day and disappeared to deep square leg for a time, looking thoroughly bored. He subsequently made a habit of scoring heavily against Derbyshire, even if form was increasingly evasive as the years advanced.

Yet at the end of a career when he racked up 52 hundreds and 104 fifties, Morris will go down, not just as an ultimately unfulfilled talent but as a batsman who at times bordered on genius. In our successful Sunday League Refuge Assurance win in 1990, we had an excellent batting side and the triumvirate of Barnett, Bowler and Morris gave the innings wonderful starts. With Bruce Roberts, Adrian Kuiper and Chris Adams to follow there was plenty of firepower yet one always felt that Morris vied with Barnett as the best of all. Kuiper was the finisher supreme, yet "Animal" and Barnett were the key wickets. At Taunton that year, in response to a Somerset total of over 250, the pair opened our reply with a stand of 232 that thrilled all who saw it with the sheer brilliance of the strokeplay. The game was won off the last ball as Kuiper smashed a huge six to end one of the better run chases in our history.

Now John Morris is at the helm as club coach and it could yet be that his greatest legacy to Derbyshire cricket is in the creation of a young and talented squad that plays in his own image. Articulate, intelligent and affable, Morris' stock may yet run higher in Derbyshire folklore and we must hope that he is allowed time to develop the squad still further.