Jimmy Binks
Encyclopedia
James Graham "Jimmy" Binks (born 5 October 1935, Hull
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...

, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

, England
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...

) is a former English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 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 as a wicket-keeper
Wicket-keeper
The wicket-keeper in the sport of cricket is the player on the fielding side who stands behind the wicket or stumps being guarded by the batsman currently on strike...

 for Yorkshire
Yorkshire County Cricket Club
Yorkshire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Yorkshire as one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure....

. Although he was regarded by many as the best wicket-keeper of his generation, his limited batting ability restricted him to just two Test match
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 appearances for England
English cricket team
The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...

, both on the 1963-64 tour to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Ironically, because of injuries to other players, he opened the batting
Batting order (cricket)
In cricket, the batting order is the sequence in which batsmen play through their team's innings, there always being two batsmen taking part at any one time...

 in three of his four Test innings.

Life and career

Binks' County Championship
County Championship
The County Championship is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales...

 career is unique. Coming into the Yorkshire team in June 1955, he then played in every single Championship game played by Yorkshire until he retired at the end of the 1969 season. Yorkshire won the Championship seven times in this period.

Binks stands 19th on the all-time list of wicketkeepers, with 1,071 first-class dismissals to his name. He holds the record for the most catches in an English season, with 96 in 1960. With 11 stumpings also in this season, he is one of only seven wicketkeepers with more than 100 dismissals in a single English season.

With regard to Binks' short international career, the cricket commentor, Colin Bateman, stated, "Binks... oddly failed to reproduce the elegant assurance he brought to his work with Yorkshire. It may have had something to do with the fact that he was also asked to act as emergency opener".

Binks was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1969.
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