Maurice Tate

Maurice William Tate was a former Sussex and England player who played 679 first-class matches and 39 test matches. He was a right handed batsman and a right armed fast bowler who lead the English test bowling attack. He is the first cricketer from Sussex to have taken a wicket on the very first ball of test cricket debut.

Maurice Tate was the son of a famous off-spin bowler, Fred Tate. He began his career as a hard-hitter batsman as well as a spinner back in 1912. His debut game was against South Africa at Brimingham. Later on he played further test matches and established himself as a profound batsman. He also scored more than one thousand runs from his first eleven successive seasons.

As a test batsman, Tate was part of 39 test matches which he played at a batting average of 25.48. He scored a total of 1,198 runs from those matches with a top score of 100 runs. His bowling average was also good at 26.16 with best figures of 6 wickets for 42 runs.

Tate was a very experienced first-class cricketer having participated in 679 matches and batted with an average of 25.04. His bowling average was 18.16. He scored a total of 21,717 runs from these matches with a top score of 203.

In 1936 however, his bowling performance started to deteriorate and he started becoming a more expensive bowler from then onwards. Tate still holds the record for the most dismissals outside England, 116 in India. He scored 1,000 runs as well as dismissed 200 batsmen from three successive seasons from 1923 till 1925. He is also one of the only nine players to have achieved a career double of 20,000 runs as well as 2,000 wickets. Throughout his career, Tate took three hat tricks.

Career Highlights

He was named the Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1924.