Mark Butcher

The 5’11” tall left-handed English batsman Mark Alan Butcher was born in London, England. He played first-class cricket for Surrey. Butcher joined Surrey in 1992 and played with the same team till he left cricket altogether in 2009. He was also an occasional medium-paced bowler for his team.

Butcher made his test cricket debut in 1997 for the Ashes series. He played a total of 71 test matches during his entire career. He scored 4,288 runs in total with a batting average of 34.58. During his career, he hit 8 test cricket centuries.

For one season, in 1999, Butcher captained the England team while playing against New Zealand. The test series ended in a draw. Butcher is remembered as “the person who has played most test cricket matches without appearing in a one day international match”.

Butcher made a good debut hitting 2 half-centuries in just 5 test matches against Australia. Later, he was struggling against the West Indies the same year. Again, in the next series against South Africa, he performed well by hitting 2 half-centuries. In short, he had an on-off performance during his early years.

In his domestic career, Butcher played 280 first class matches and 191 List A matches. His batting averaged 40.70 and 31.85 respectively. Butcher was a reasonably good bowler. His bowling averages are recorded as 36.06 for test matches, 33.89 for first class cricket and 45.10 for List A matches.

In 2005, Butcher missed most of his matches due to a series of injuries. He played his last test match in 2004 against South Africa. He was re-elected as the captain of Surrey in 2009, but he announced his retirement from all forms of cricket in August of the same year owing to his knee injury.