Jonathan Wileman was born in Sheffield on 19 August 1970 and educated at Malvern. He had an outstanding record for the school, topping the First XI batting averages for four successive summers and, in his final year of 1988, captaining the school and heading the bowling table as well as the batting.
After going to Salford University, he came to Nottingham where he played club cricket in 1992 for Nottingham Forest and made his First-Class debut for Notts against Cambridge University, marking the occasion with a century.
In 1993 and 1994 he played Minor Counties cricket for Lincolnshire, again with remarkable success, hitting five centuries and scoring 1,068 runs, average 66.75. In the second year he was living in Surrey and playing club cricket for Wimbledon – he also played three games for Surrey Seconds.
Wileman joined the full time Notts staff in 1995. He was a regular member of the Sunday League side, averaging, with the aid of eight 'not out' innings, 45.20 and took 17 wickets at 28.00. He also appeared in eight First-Class games, but failed to reach an individual fifty.
On leaving Trent Bridge in 1996, he went on to play for Lincolnshire again, and for the Surrey Cricket Board.
In 2020, having thought his playing days were over, he was invited to join the Surrey Over-50s team and three years later was selected for the England squad that won the 2023 Over-50s World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa. Jonathan played six of the eight matches, including the semi-final and final. He also played in a two-match Ashes series immediately after the World Cup in which England again triumphed so he became, at 52, a winner of both a World Cup medal and an Ashes series.
April 2023
Nottinghamshire First-Class Number: 522