{"id":382354,"date":"2026-01-21T14:43:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/382354\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T14:43:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:43:07","slug":"norman-gifford-ex-england-worcestershire-and-warwickshire-spinner-dies-aged-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/382354\/","title":{"rendered":"Norman Gifford: Ex-England, Worcestershire and Warwickshire spinner dies aged 85"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legendary former Worcestershire spinner and captain Norman Gifford MBE has died at the age of 85.<\/p>\n

Slow left-armer Gifford, who played in 15 Test matches for England, played for Worcestershire for 22 years between 1960 and 1982, taking 1,615 first-class wickets and winning the County Championship in 1964 and 1965 and again, as captain, 10 years later.<\/p>\n

He also led the Pears to the Sunday League title in 1971.<\/p>\n

Gifford, who is second to leg-spinner Reg Perks on Worcestershire’s all-time list of wicket-takers, claimed more than 100 wickets in a season three times, with his best haul of 133 in 1961.<\/p>\n

He took five wickets in an innings 76 times and finished with 10 in a match on 12 occasions.<\/p>\n

In a statement,, external<\/a> Worcestershire said: “Everyone at Worcestershire County Cricket Club would like to offer their sincere condolences to the family, who are all in our thoughts.”<\/p>\n

Gifford played well into his forties and spent five years with Warwickshire after leaving New Road, playing his final game – aptly at Worcestershire – in August 1989, at the age of 48.<\/p>\n

He captained the Bears between 1985 and 1987 and finished with 471 wickets in first-class and List A cricket in his time at Edgbaston.<\/p>\n

In Gifford’s first season as skipper he took 100 wickets in a season for the fourth time in his career, claiming 104 in 1985.<\/p>\n

He ended his career with 2,068 wickets in 710 first-class matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legendary former Worcestershire spinner and captain Norman Gifford MBE has died at the age of 85. Slow left-armer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-382354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}