James Trevor Ralph is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 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...

er who played one 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...

 match for Worcestershire

Worcestershire County Cricket Club

Worcestershire 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 Worcestershire...

 and later played minor counties cricket for Shropshire

Shropshire County Cricket Club

Shropshire County Cricket Club is one of the county clubs which make up the Minor Counties in the English domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Shropshire and playing in the Minor Counties Championship and the MCCA Knockout Trophy...

. He was born in Kidderminster

Kidderminster

Kidderminster is a town, in the Wyre Forest district of Worcestershire, England. It is located approximately seventeen miles south-west of Birmingham city centre and approximately fifteen miles north of Worcester city centre. The 2001 census recorded a population of 55,182 in the town...

, Worcestershire

Worcestershire

Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...

.

As well as playing club cricket

Club cricket

Club cricket is a mainly amateur, but still formal, form of the sport of cricket, usually involving teams playing in competitions at weekends or in the evening. There is a great deal of variation in game format although the Laws of Cricket are always observed...

 for Kidderminster

Kidderminster Victoria Cricket Club

Kidderminster Victoria Cricket Club is an amateur cricket club in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England. Their 1st and 2nd XIs currently play in the Birmingham and District Premier League Premier Division. Their 3rd, 4th and 5th XIs play in the Worcestershire County Cricket League...

,
Ralph played many times for Worcestershire's Second XI between 1994 and 1996, and a run of good scores in the latter year earned him what turned out to be his only first-class appearance, against South Africa A

South Africa A cricket team

The South Africa A cricket team is a national cricket team representing South Africa. It is the 'second-tier' of international South African cricket, below the full South Africa national cricket team. Matches played by South Africa A are not considered to be Test matches or One Day...

 in August. He failed to grasp the opportunity, however, being dismissed for a pair, and his brief first-class career ended almost as soon as it had begun.

In 1998 Ralph returned to representative cricket with Shropshire in the Minor Counties Championship, and made a number of List A appearances for them in the NatWest Trophy and its successor the C&G Trophy

C&G Trophy

The Friends Provident Trophy was a one-day cricket competition in the United Kingdom.It was one of the four tournaments in which the eighteen first-class counties compete each season. They were joined by teams from Scotland and Ireland...

. Perhaps his best performance came against 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...

 at Telford in 2000: although Shropshire lost the game by 27 runs, Ralph's unbeaten 102 gained him the man-of-the-match award. He took his only two List A wickets against Buckinghamshire

Buckinghamshire County Cricket Club

Buckinghamshire County Cricket Club is one of the county clubs which make up the Minor Counties in the English domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Buckinghamshire and playing in the Minor Counties Championship and the MCCA Knockout Trophy. The Minor Counties play...

 in 2002.

In club cricket, after playing for some years for Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

 clubs, and most recently for Shifnal, he returned to Kidderminster Victoria for the 2009 season.

External links

• Statistical summary from CricketArchive
  CricketArchive
  CricketArchive is a website that aims to provide a comprehensive archive of records relating to the sport of cricket. It claims to be the most comprehensive cricket database on the internet, including scorecards for all matches of first-class cricket , List A cricket , Women's Test cricket and...