KEEPING SCORE…
Stumpers’ records
As the 2026 ends, in which Notts have fielded three different wicket keepers during the Championship, it is appropriate to look back at a couple of famed ‘stumpers’ from our illustrious past.
Ben Lilley and Tom Oates, whose careers overlapped, each have anniversaries this year of great, and as yet not bettered, wicket keeping records.
In 1926, one hundred years ago, Ben Lilley had 30 – yes, thirty! – stumpings in a single season. Given that modern players play barely half the First-Class games in a season that Ben did, surely a record that will never be equalled, let alone beaten.
Twenty years before Ben Lilley, Tom Oates set a record for Nottinghamshire of ten wicket keeping victims in a single match – only Bruce French and Chris Scott have since matched that for Notts and no-one has done better.
Oates kept wicket for the county side from 1897 to 1925. He began the 1897 season in the Nottinghamshire team to play Gloucestershire at Cheltenham in August, when he deputised for Arthur Pike.
Oates continued to represent Nottinghamshire until nearly 50 years of age and his last First-Class match was against Leicestershire in June 1925; John King, stumped off Len Richmond – of whom more later – was his final First-Class victim.
He held the Nottinghamshire record for dismissals (967: 744 catches and 223 stumpings) until it was broken by Chris Read in 2017.
That game in 1906 was at home to Middlesex (both French and Scott got their ‘ten-fer’ in away games) played in August.
In the visitors’ first innings, Tom Oates took six catches – five of them off the medium pace bowling of Bert Hallam – and followed that up with three more catches and one stumping in Middlesex’s second innings.
The lone stumping was of Philip Harrison, off the bowling of Jimmy Iremonger’s brisk medium pace; we must assume that Oates was standing up to the stumps, as has suddenly become fashionable again 120 years later.
Ben Lilley played his early cricket for Kimberley Institute and, prior to joining Nottinghamshire Groundstaff in 1921, had professional 
engagements in Kirkcaldy in Scotland and Mourne Grange in Ireland.
He was principally a wicket-keeper, but also a steady and reliable right-hand batter. His First-Class debut was for Nottinghamshire v Essex at Leyton in June 1921, deputising for Tom Oates.
In May 1925 he hit 200no for Notts Seconds against a Staffordshire XI that included the great S F Barnes and from then on he was preferred to Oates in the First XI.
Lilley had great success in his first proper season in First-Class cricket and completed 1,000 runs for Nottinghamshire, which he repeated in 1928. In 1925 he also exceeded 60 victims behind the stumps, a feat he was to claim in nine seasons in all.
His total of 81 victims in 1926 created a new Nottinghamshire record that has only been beaten in a season by Bruce French (87 in 1984) and Geoff Millman (85 in 1961).
What was truly remarkable about that record was the number of stumpings – and this, may we remind you, in the season when Harold Larwood made his debut.
Although Larwood had 103 wickets in 1926, he was not the top wicket taker for the county; that was Len Richmond with 149, followed by fellow spinner Sam Staples with 117.
Lilley’s first stumping of that season came in the second match – snaring Harold Gilligan of Sussex off Len Richmond; the last one, Lancashire’s Ted McDonald, came from Sam Staples.
In a rich summer for spinners, Lilley took 20 stumpings from Len Richmond, eight off Sam Staples and one each from Arthur Carr and Bill Flint.
With Arthur Carr attending the Trent Bridge Test and both Sam Staples and Willis Walker absent ill, Lilley captained Nottinghamshire for the first time in June 1934 v Leicestershire at Leicester. Within a few weeks he was appointed captain for the rest of the season, when Carr was unable to play due to illness – the first professional to have a run of games as captain since fellow stumper Mordecai Sherwin in the 1880s.
During 1936, Lilley lost his place in the First XI and his last First-Class match for the county was against Worcestershire at Trent Bridge in May 1937.
He played in 373 First-Class matches, scoring 10,496 runs with a highest score of 124, one of seven First-Class centuries; and as wicketkeeper, holding 657 catches and completing 133 stumpings.
In 1941 (aged 47) Ben Lilley played in three war time matches at Trent Bridge; he took his final stumping v RAF on 6 September, stumping county colleague Frank Woodhead (12) off the bowling of George Heane.
Nottinghamshire have been blessed with some truly special wicket keepers over the years and Ben Lilley and Tom Oates deserve to be recognised as among the very best.
September 2026