Paul Adrian Todd was born on 12 March 1953 at Morton near Southwell, Notts and played for Nottinghamshire from 1972 to 1982. His brother Steve also played for Notts, in the Second Eleven championship, from 1976 to 1977.
Paul was on the Notts staff for 11 years and during that time scored more than 7,000 runs and hit eight centuries. The highlight of his batting performances was his career best of 178 against Gloucester at Trent Bridge in September 1975, playing with some great players such as Clive Rice and Mike Smedley and Derek Randall. The illustrious company that day also included umpire Harold ‘Dickie’’ Bird; Notts went on to win the game by 10 wickets.
Sadly, in 1982 Paul had to give up the game due to family illness. He did, however, return to club cricket in 1984 and from 1985 played for Staffordshire and appeared in the combined Minor Counties side. He struck a belligerent 107 against Glamorgan, a county he was to join later in 1987, in the Benson & Hedges competition and was awarded the Man of the Match.
He continued to play for Glamorgan in 14 First-Class matches playing his last County Championship match in September 1987 versus Gloucestershire at the Royal and Sun Alliance ground in Bristol.
He played only one-day games in 1988, and continued to play limited-overs games locally, his last being in July 2004 in the Derbyshire Premier Cup, playing for Collingham against Clifton when he made 12.
In one of his last games for Glamorgan, Paul came up against the mercurial Richard Hadlee who got his wicket in both innings, in the first innings caught Rice bowled Hadlee - Todd was certainly not the only player to fall to that combination.
June 2020
Nottinghamshire First-Class Number: 463