Jon Atkinson
Encyclopedia
Jonathon Colin Mark Atkinson (born 10 July 1968) was an English cricketer. He was born at Butleigh
Butleigh
Butleigh is a small village and civil parish, located in Somerset. The nearest village to it is Barton St David, and it is located a short distance from Glastonbury and Street...

, Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

. He played first-class
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 and List A cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 for Somerset
Somerset County Cricket Club
Somerset County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Somerset...

 and Cambridge University
Cambridge University Cricket Club
Cambridge University Cricket Club is a first-class cricket team. It now plays all but one of its first-class cricket matches as part of the Cambridge University Centre of Cricketing Excellence , which includes Anglia Ruskin University...

 between 1985 and 1990. He was educated at Millfield School where his father was headmaster.

Family

His mother was Shirley Atkinson and his father was Colin Atkinson
Colin Atkinson
Colin Ronald Michael Atkinson CBE - Cricketer, schoolmaster and headmaster of Millfield School....

, who was the headmaster of Millfield School between 1971 and 1986; he has two siblings, David and Sally. His father Colin had himself played cricket for Somerset between 1960 and 1967 and had captained the team between 1965 and 1967.

Cricket career

In 1985, Atkinson was a 17-year-old pupil at Millfield when he made his first-class debut for Somerset.

It is reported that he was due only to watch the match at Weston-super-Mare
Clarence Park, Weston-super-Mare
Clarence Park was given to the town of Weston-super-Mare by Rebecca Davies in memory of her husband. The cricket pavilion at the park dates from 1882. A multitude of sports have been played at the park, including cricket. The ground is owned by the local council. It is currently used by...

 against Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire County Cricket Club
Northamptonshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Northamptonshire. Its limited overs team is called the Northants Steelbacks. The traditional club colour is Maroon. During the...

, but found he was playing. He made 79 and shared in a seventh wicket partnership of 177 with Ian Botham
Ian Botham
Sir Ian Terence Botham OBE is a former England Test cricketer and Test team captain, and current cricket commentator. He was a genuine all-rounder with 14 centuries and 383 wickets in Test cricket, and remains well-known by his nickname "Beefy"...

 in just 31 overs; Atkinson hit three sixes and 11 fours.

He retained his place in the Somerset side to the end of the season and played in a few matches for Somerset in the summer of 1986 when he left school, but he was unable to repeat the success of his first game, and the 79 remained his highest score in first-class cricket. He was, however, picked for the England Young Cricketers side in a youth one-day international against Sri Lanka.

Atkinson played mostly second eleven cricket in 1987, but in 1988 he returned to first-class cricket at Cambridge University, where he was a student at Downing College. Played as a middle-order batsman, his only score of note in his first season for Cambridge was 73 against Surrey
Surrey County Cricket Club
Surrey County Cricket Club is one of the 18 professional county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Surrey. Its limited overs team is called the Surrey Lions...

, and this was his highest score in his three years at the university. He was awarded his Blue
University Sporting Blue
A Blue is an award earned by sportsmen and women at a university and some schools for competition at the highest level. The awarding of Blues began at Oxford and Cambridge Universities...

, though in fact the match against Oxford University
Oxford University Cricket Club
Oxford University Cricket Club is a first-class cricket team, representing the University of Oxford. It plays its home games at the University Parks in Oxford, England...

 was abandoned without a ball being bowled, the only time this has happened in the history of the fixture going back to 1829. He went on to win Blues in both 1989 and 1990, when he was captain of the Cambridge team: both of these matches were also badly affected by rain. In all three seasons, he played List A cricket in the Benson and Hedges Cup for the Combined Universities cricket team: an amalgam of the Oxford and Cambridge sides. In both 1988 and 1989 he returned after the university term was over to play occasional games for Somerset, but the 1990 University match was his last first-class game, and there was only one further List A match for Somerset in August 1990.
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