A bad news came for England Cricket on Tuesday night. Former fast bowler Joey Benjamin, who played international cricket for England in the 1990s, died on Tuesday night. Benjamin was 60 years old and died of a heart attack in Surrey, England. Benjamin made his Test debut for England in 1994 at the age of 33. The same year he also made his debut in ODI cricket. Benjamin's international career did not drag on, but he did spend a long time in county cricket and took many wickets.
Surrey Cricket Club (Surrey) informed Benjamin on Tuesday night about his demise. Benjamin was born in 1961 in the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, from where he moved to Britain with his family at the age of 15. Here he started his career playing for Warwickshire County. Everything happened in Benjamin's career after much waiting.
Test debut at age 33
Benjamin got to play first class cricket for the first time at the age of 27. He started his first class career in 1988 from Warwickshire, but he did not get much success here and in 1992 he started playing for Surrey. From here, his career got a new height and England's national team was called to play.
In 1994, he made his Test debut for England at the age of 33. In his home ground at The Oval in London, he took 4 wickets in the first innings against South Africa, in which batsmen like Kepler Wessels and Hansie Cronje made their victims.
However, after this, he did not get to play any test again. This year he also made his ODI debut against Australia, but was able to take only 1 wicket in 2 matches and was discharged from the team.
80 wickets in a year
However, Benjamin's vigor in county cricket remained intact and he troubled the batsmen a lot. After coming to Surrey in 1992, he got tremendous success. In his second season with the team, he took 64 wickets. Then in the next season, he made it difficult for the batsmen to stay at the crease. In the 1994 season, he took 80 wickets in a year with an excellent average of 20.7. By combining his first class and a career list, Benjamin took a total of 560 wickets in his name.
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