Mathew Dowman was released by Notts at the end of the 1999 season and joined Derbyshire.
A batsman with a great deal of natural ability, Dowman hit the headlines early, when in 1993 he scored a record 267 for England Under 19s v West Indies Under 19s at Hove, a match that also featured a young West Indian batsman called Shivnarine Chanderpaul. The surprise to many would be that it was Shiv that went on to a long career in the first-class game and many full international caps whilst Dowman faded from the game.
Mathew had joined the Trent Bridge staff at the start of that same season. His first-class debut came in 1994 and his maiden Championship hundred - an impressive knock - against Surrey in 1996. Mathew reached 1,000 runs in 1997, including three hundreds, and was capped at the beginning of the 1998 season but was unable to recapture the form of the previous summer. He was again disappointing the following summer and the decision was made to release him.
Mathew has been a community coach with Derbyshire Cricket Board since leaving Trent Bridge and has played club cricket for Quarndon, Caythorpe (Notts) and then Grantham, where he was also the groundsman. He is now a groundsman with the ECB academy at Loughborough. He played for Lincolnshire when they won the 2003 Minor Counties Championship; former team-mate Paul Pollard was in the same line-up and they each finished in the top five batting averages in the Minor Counties stats for that season.
March 2020
Nottinghamshire First-Class Number: 529