Remembering Jim Parks | 1931 - 2022

Sussex Cricket is deeply saddened to announce the death of Jim Parks at the age of 90. Jim died in Worthing hospital this morning after a fall at home last week. At the time of his death, he was England’s oldest living Test cricketer.

Jim was, beyond any doubt, one of the greatest cricketers ever to wear the Martlets. He was born in Haywards Heath in 1930 and attended Hove County Grammar School.

In 1949 he made his debut for Sussex at the age of 18, marking the start of a career that was to see him play in 739 first class matches and 132 List A games.

He was an all-round cricketer in every sense. He started his career as a skilful leg-break bowler before becoming a wicket-keeper batsman of the highest order, playing in 46 test matches for England and scoring over 36,000 first class runs.

1963 saw the advent of one day cricket and Jim was an essential part of the Sussex team that won the Gillette Cup at Lord’s in each of the first two years of the competition.

He was an attacking batsman, whose game was ideally suited to one day cricket, and he developed a number of shots including what is now known as the “slog sweep”, well before other batsmen thought of them.

In 1973 after 23 years with Sussex Jim joined Somerset, where he played until just before his 47th birthday. After his professional career, Jim re-joined Sussex as Marketing Manager and had two separate spells as our President, including during the 175th Anniversary celebrations in 2014.

Until very recently he was a much-loved and frequent visitor to Hove, always taking a walk round the ground with his wife Jenny during play to meet friends and talk to supporters.

Our thoughts and sincere condolences are very much with Jenny and with Jim’s children Bobby and Louise.

The arrangements for Jim’s Funeral will be announced in due course and the players of both teams will wear black armbands at Taunton tomorrow evening as a mark of respect to Jim, who will be sadly missed by all at Hove.