|
Mark Benson was not the tidiest cricketer to play for England. To begin
with he did not have a tidy batting style. Left-handers tend to come in
two types: either they are all grace and style, flashing the part in
rapier-like curves in the style of a Gower or a Woolley; or they are
tough and determined, grinding out runs in the style of a workman
digging a trench. Benson was one of the latter. He was not especially
tidy to look at either. For a large part of his Kent career he batted in
a helmet which had half its peak broken away. But he was tidy in a
different, colloquial sense- the sense that meant he was up to his job.
The Benson family had a cricketing tradition. Although by the time Mark
was born they had settled in Sussex, at Shoreham-by-Sea, his father
Frank had worked abroad and had actually played cricket for Ghana. He
had little chance to prove it for England.
His name was being mentioned
when England were casting around for a new opening batsman in 1985, but
in fact the selectors opted to play Wayne Larkins in the third Test
against India. Benson opened with Graham Gooch and did not disgrace
himself, scoring 21 and 30. That gave him a second chance and he was
chosen for the ODIs against the second tourists of that summer, the New
Zealanders. He made 24 in the first match at Headingley, but England
lost badly. Bill Athey replaced him in the second match and made 142 not
out. There might still have been a place for Benson in the first Test
match, but instead the selectors opted for the Yorkshireman Martin
Moxon. Benson never had another chance and became one of England's many
one-Test wonders. (Bob Harragan)
County Career. 1980 - 1995.
Benson made his first-class debut as a left-handed opening batsman in 1980 and was virtually an "ever-present" in the Kent side for the next fifteen seasons scoring over 18,000 runs (48 centuries) for the county. He was Kent's third highest aggregate run scorer in the post-war era and his batting average of 40.27 was the fourth highest for a major batsman in Kent's history (after Les Ames, Frank Woolley and Colin Cowdrey). He scored 1,000 runs in a season 12 times, with a best of 1,725 runs (average 44.23) in 1987.
At the end of the 1995 season Benson was forced to retire due to a knee injury.
He then became an umpire. Tests umpired 27 (2004–2009)
|