Derek Shackleton was one of those giants of county cricket who never quite made it at international level. His Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack obituary in 2008 celebrated a career of remarkable longevity.
Read more from the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack archive
Derek Shackleton was one of the most admired cricketers of his generation. Along with Tom Cartwright and Les Jackson, who also both died in 2007, “Shack” left his contemporaries awestruck, opposing batsmen mesmerised and Test selectors almost completely cold. They played 14 Tests between them; Shackleton’s share was seven, and he took 18 wickets at 42.66. In all first-class cricket, though, he took 2,857 wickets, a figure surpassed by only seven men in history, at 18.65.
Of these, 2,669 were for Hampshire, with whom his name will be forever inextricably linked. Normally eloquent men struggle for original words to describe his success. They tend to get repetitive, like Shackleton himself. Of the 159,043 balls he delivered in first-class cricket, the overwhelming majority landed precisely where he intended, which was normally on line just back of a length. John Arlott put it best: “shrewdly varied and utterly accurate medium-pace bowling beating down as unremittingly as February rain”.
Shackleton came from the strange Pennine border town of Todmorden; he grew up thinking he was a Lancastrian, though technically he was qualified for Yorkshire. He was called up in 1943, but the army quickly discovered he had a serious problem in his left eye (which never left him and made his career even more of a wonder). He was obliged to join the Pioneer Corps, who were in harm’s way without actually fighting. Just before demob in 1947, he met the Hampshire coach Sam Staples, who invited him for a trial. Staples thought here was a batsman who bowled the odd leg-break; Shackleton thought the same.
The 1963 West Indians were one of the most intimidating batting teams in history, but Shackleton took 15 wickets and conceded little more than two an over. There was no long-term future in this, though, and he returned to county cricket. His decline was barely perceptible. At Westcliff in 1968, there was a valley on a Shack length across the pitch: Essex 95 all out. At Bath that summer, he bowled three balls down the leg side to Roy Virgin at the start of the Somerset innings then complained the stumps were out of alignment. No one else could see it. Shack was right, of course. In the nets, once he took Malcolm Heath aside, then bowled three successive balls which hit off, middle, leg. “I’ve seen everything now,” said Heath. “No, you haven’t,” Shack said, then he did the trick in reverse.
On retiring, he coached at Canford School, and spent three years on the first-class umpires’ list, where he was curiously unsuccessful, struggling with the Laws and even the signals. His son Julian had an unremarkable career for Gloucestershire in the 1970s. Shackleton’s last illness was long and difficult, but phlegmatic endurance was his greatest strength.
Shackleton, Derek died on September 28, 2007, aged 83.
