The 1982 Essex League (ECL) campaign was a fruitful one for 31-year-old Colchester & East Essex CC skipper Nigel Hilliard, whose 66 wickets at 9.41 not only helped the champions retain the crown won for the first time the previous year but also eclipsed the existing league record of 65. The following year, he increased the benchmark to 70 – albeit without a title – which was 14 more than a hostile, young and ’tache-less Merv Hughes managed for Woodford Wells. And in 1984, when Colchester finished joint champions, he extended it to 79, which remains the ECL record 40 years on.
“There was only one new ball in those days,” recalls Hilliard of this extraordinary three-year peak, “and I took no wickets in the last two games in 1984. They changed the league ball the following year, and unfortunately it didn’t swing!”
Hilliard’s early cricket had been at Forest School and the famous Ilford indoor centre. His father, a rebellious Essex CCC committee member, was chair of the Essex Cricket Association (ECA) and in “a nepotistic move” made his 16-year-old son captain of the county’s under-19s, “a position I held for three years. But I was mature for my years and had enough talent to make the South versus North [NAYC] under-19 matches three years in a row”. Weekend cricket in those pre-league days came for Brentwood then South Essex Waterworks on Saturdays, with Sundays spent at Essex Wanderers and Halstead, while there was also county hockey through the winters. In 1973, the ECL’s sophomore season, he began his long associationwith Colchester, fine-tuning his craft in regular appearances for Essex Second XI alongside the likes of Graham Gooch, with Mike Brearley a first scalp. “I was only ever slow-medium,” he says. “I somehow managed to bowl – sometimes to 7-2 leg-side fields – by putting my right foot behind leg stump and delivering over the top of the wicket, although I knocked the bails off at least once an over.”