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Robert William ("Bob") Taylor (born July 17, 1941) is a former English cricketer who played as wicket-keeper for Derbyshire between 1961 and 1984 and for England between 1971 and 1984. He made 57 Test, and 639 first class cricket appearances in total, taking 1,473 catches. He made his first class debut for Minor Counties against India in 1960, having made his Staffordshire debut in 1958. He became Derbyshire's first choice wicket-keeper when George Dawkes sustained a career ending injury. His final First Class appearance was at the Scarborough Festival in 1988. He remained first choice until his retirement except for a short period in 1964 when Laurie Johnson was tried as a batsman-wicketkeeper.

Yaylor made his Test debut in 1971 in New Zealand at the end of the successful Ashes winning tour. This gesture was apparently not appreciated by Alan Knott, the incumbent.^[1] Though highly regarded, Taylor was unable to displace Knott who was among other things, a superior batsman. It was only when Knott joined World Series Cricket in 1977 that Taylor appeared in more Tests. Taylor was selected as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1977.

Career

Taylor played in 639 first-class matches. His 1649 dismissals (1473 caught, 176 stumped) in 639 games remains a first-class record. With the bat, Taylor averaged only 16.92, and he is one of only two players to have passed 10,000 first-class runs without scoring a century. He subsequently scored exactly 100 against Yorkshire at Sheffield in 1981, his only first-class century.^[2] He also took one first-class wicket as a bowler.

His highest score in Test Cricket was 97 against Australia at Adelaide in 1978-9.

He captained Derbyshire Second XI in 1985.

Bob Taylor wore two pairs of thin Chamois inners and Mitre wicket-keeping gloves from which he cut away all the padding from inside the palms and removed the webbing. His reasoning for this was that he liked to feel the ball in his palm and if taking the ball correctly most of the time the bruising wasn't too troublesome. This can be contrasted with Alan Knott who preferred plenty of padding on his palms.^[3]

Notes

References

• Wisden 1961
• Wisden 1962

External links

• Player Profile: Bob Taylor (cricketer) from Cricinfo
• Wisden Cricketer of the Year citation

squad – Rest of the World XI in Australia 1971/72 1 Sobers (c) • 2 Ackerman • 3 Asif Masood • 4 Bedi • 5 Cunis • 6 Engineer (wk) • 7 Gavaskar • 8 Gifford • 9 Grieg • 10 Hutton • 11 Intikhab Alam • 12 Kanhai • 13 Lloyd • 14 PM Pollock • 15 RG Pollock • 16 Taylor (wk) • 17 Zaheer Abbas

England squad – 1979 Cricket World Cup (runners-up) 1 Brearley (c) • 2 Botham • 3 Boycott • 4 Edmonds • 5 Gooch • 6 Gower • 7 Hendrick • 8 Larkins • 9 Miller • 10 Old • 11 Randall • 12 Taylor (wk) • 13 Willis