Michael Deakin is a former 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 for Derbyshire

Derbyshire County Cricket Club

Derbyshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the England and Wales domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Derbyshire...

 in 1981.

Deakin was born at Bury

Bury

Bury is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the River Irwell, east of Bolton, west-southwest of Rochdale, and north-northwest of the city of Manchester...

, Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

. In 1979 he was playing cricket for Combined Services

Combined Services cricket team

The Combined Services cricket team represents the British armed forces. The team played at first-class level in England for more than forty years in the mid-twentieth century. Their first first-class match was against Gentlemen of England at Lord's in 1920, while their last was against Oxford...

 and for the RAF

Royal Air Force cricket team

The Royal Air Force cricket team is a cricket side representing the British Royal Air Force. The team played 11 first-class matches: nine between 1922 and 1932, mostly against other branches of the Services, and another two in 1945 and 1946. Their home ground is the Royal Air Force Sports Ground,...

. He joined Derbyshire for the 1981 season

Derbyshire County Cricket Club in 1981

Derbyshire Country Cricket Club in 1981 represents cricket season when the English club Derbyshire had been playing for one hundred and ten years. It was the season when they won National Westminster Bank Trophy. They won ten matches in the John Player League to finish fourth...

 as a stopgap solution to a Derbyshire wicket-keeper shortage, while Bob Taylor

Bob Taylor (cricketer)

Robert William Taylor , known as Bob Taylor, is a former English cricketer who played as wicket-keeper for Derbyshire between 1961 and 1984 and for England between 1971 and 1984. He made 57 Test, and 639 first class cricket appearances in total, taking 1,473 catches. The 2,069 victims across his...

was engaged in Test matches. He played in the Second XI in May 1981, and in under 25 competitions in June. In July, he made four first-class appearances for the team and played in the John Player League. He was released by the club at the end of the season.

Deakin was a right-handed batsman and played six innings in four first class matches with an average of 7.5 and a top score of 15. He did not bat in the one-day competition. As a wicket-keeper he took nine catches in the first class game and two in the one-day competition.