Conrad Sutcliffe takes a stroll down Memory Lane looking at bowling feats from the Devon Cricket League archive
CONRAD SUTCLIFFE TAKES A STROLL DOWN THE DCL MEMORY LANE
HOW on earth do you determine who the most successful wicket-taking bowler has been over more than 50 years of Premier cricket in Devon? That’s a question I have been rummaging around trying to find an answer for over the past few days.
My curiosity was pricked the impressive bowling stats booked last season by Paignton’s South African seamer Aya Gqamana, who has been re-hired for 2026 after taking 54 wickets at a fraction more than 10 runs each last season.
Gqamana isn’t the first bowler to take 50-plus wickets in an 18-game season – the Premier Division had four games more up to 1998 – of even the first to get there in the 10-over limit era (2012-present). Sandford’s Dikshan Negi with 50 in 2023 beat him to it. No one else has got into the 50s before or since.
Barton’s Aqeel Ahmed currently holds the record for the greatest number of Premier Division wickets taken in an 18-game season with 66 in 2001. During four successive seasons – 2001-2004 – the Pakistani spinner claimed 66, 53, 64 and 57 wickets. What a record!
As far as I can see from DCL records – which are not noted for their comprehensiveness – Aqeel’s 2001 haul at 8.83 runs each was then (and still is) the lowest average recorded by any Premier bowler in that format.
Aqeel played the bulk of his cricket in Devon during an era when bowlers had more overs. The limit was 16 in his heyday. And in 2001 he sent down exactly 216 overs. Gqamana. In comparison, bowled 147.1 overs.
Trying to compare the two dividing overs bowled by wickets taken favours Gqamana (2.72) over Aqeel (3.27) is pointless. Aqeel bowled at players blocking out for a draw; therefore playing fewer shots. The draw went in 2012. Gqamana may have had fewer overs, but wasn’t bowling at batters determined to preserve their wicket in the hope of salvaging a couple of points.
Only one other bowler has taken 60 wickets in an 18-game season: North Devon’s Glenn Querl with 60 in 2011. He had more overs – it was 15 then – and had to contend with blocking tactics. Where does he fit in the wicket-taking hierarchy?
League record books imply that wicket-taking was tougher during the winning-and-losing-draw era. For an example, go back to 1998, when the DCL played a 22-game season with 23 the maximum number of overs a bowler could bowl.
Hancock and Torquay’s Emmett Craik dead-heated on 51 each in 1998. Hancock bowled 319 overs (no wonder his knees are knackered now) and Kiwi Craik 243. That’s hard work.
Scroll back to 1997 and the bowler at the top of the Premier aggregates and averages with 88 at 10.06 each was Heathcoat’s future Aussie Test spinner Stuart MacGill. Had he not been banned for three games at the end of the season he might have reached three figures.
MacGill wheeled away for 358.5 overs almost as many as Andy Cottam did for Seaton. Cottam, ex-of England under-19s and a journeyman pro on the First Class circuit for a while, was in his 368th over when the season ended. ‘Have a blow Cotts!’
MacGill (88), Cottam (82), Torquay’s Ryan Horrell (62) and Sandford’s Richard Coupe (56) were the top-four wicket takers that summer. All four were spinners. 
It wasn’t just spinners who were worked until they dropped in those un-restricted days.
No-one, as far as I can find in the record books, bowled more overs in a season, or took more wickets from them, than Barton’s Pakistani player-coach Naveed Anjum. In the 1990 season he served up 463.3 overs (139 of them maidens) and claimed a then record of 89 wickets at 12.21 each. Next best that season was Dave Halfyard of Braunton, then a 60-year-old former Kent and Notts seamer, whose 63 wickets came from 312 overs.
As far as I can find Anjum is the only bowler to top 80 wickets twice – he had 81 in 1989 – and his 77 more in 1991 can’t be sniffed at.
Torquay certainly got their money’s worth from Fanie de Villiers, who spent the summer of 1992 recovering his fitness after injury at the Recreation Ground
The future South African international – 18 Tests, 83 ODIs – bowled a gruelling 371.3 overs and took 89 wickets at 11.42 each. He equalled Anjum’s wicket-taking record and pipped him by less than eight-tenths of a run on average.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s clubs such as Paignton, Torquay and South Devon had packed midweek fixture lists against touring sides, which allowed modest club players like myself to rub shoulders with the neighbourhood professionals.
I was invited to play for Paignton against Cambridge Granta one afternoon in a side that had Anjum (Pakistan) and de Villiers (South Africa) opening the bowling, and Ian Gore (South Devon CC, Leeward Islands) as first change. We lost! Jamaican Richard Staple, who later captained the United States, scored a century for the tourists to win it.
Barton crop up again in the wicket-taking archives in 1984 when Martin Goulding led them to what was then the Mod-Dec Windows DCL A Division title. Goulding took 66 wickets from 352 overs at 13.89 runs each. Top of the averages? Barton team-mate Agha Zahid (46@11.76).
For three seasons in a row – 1982 (Torquay CC), 1983 and 1984 (both Barton) – Goulding bowled more than 320 overs in each one and racked-up exactly 170 league wickets.
Although league records prior to 1982 are notoriously flimsy, Goulding popped-up previously in 1980 with 55 at 8.7 each. No ramble down Memory Lane would be complete without a mention for the late John Harris, then with Exeter, whose 1978 A Division bowling average was 7.57. Sadly, the full record is incomplete.
Bovey Tracey’s Paddy Considine was the league’s stand-out bowler in the long, hot summer of 1976 with 80 wickets at 9.63 each. It was his record Anjum broke in 1990.
I cannot find any records for any seasons between 1972-1975 – and what I have between 1976-1984 is patchy. If anyone has any scrapbooks with overall league averages, or averages from the leading clubs of the era (Exeter, Exmouth, Paignton, Plymouth, Sidmouth, Torquay, Bovey Tracey or Plymstock) I would love to hear from you at conradcopy@btinternet.com
With a bit more information it would be nice to return to Memory Lane and share some other highlights. How many overs did Malcolm Kingdon bowl for Torquay and Paignton? And how many wickets did he take? I have often wondered about that one.
And if you want to share a memory from the DCL past about a player or a match, you know where I am!
