Slow-left armer Richard Stemp represented Worcestershire and Yorkshire before joining Nottinghamshire in 1999. He spent three years at Trent Bridge, playing in a total of 77 games and taking 113 wickets.
Richard David Stemp was born in Erdington, Birmingham on 11 December 1967. Having first made his mark with West Bromwich Dartmouth in the Birmingham League, he joined Worcestershire and played in the Second Eleven from 1996. He made his First-Class and List-A debuts in June 1990 and played for the Pears on 33 occasions before moving to Yorkshire in 1992, to become their first-ever signing from another County.
Stemp enjoyed six productive seasons with Yorkshire and was capped in 1996. In First-Class cricket, he took 241 wickets, with a further 100 victims in List-A matches. He twice toured overseas with England A and in the summer of 1994 was picked in the England squad for the Tests against New Zealand at Trent Bridge and Lord’s but was ultimately left out of the final eleven.
He signed for Nottinghamshire in 1999, one of several new players joining the new coach Clive Rice. With Paul Strang replaced as overseas player by Vasbert Drakes, Stemp was the side’s principal spinner. He made his Nottinghamshire First-Class debut against Cambridge University in April 1999, with his Championship bow coming a week later at Leicester. In all, he played in 29 matches, taking 65 wickets with a best of 5-123 against Worcestershire at New Road. Never a prolific batsman, Stemp saved his best score for his final Championship appearance for Notts in July 2001 against Hampshire at the Rose Bowl. Coming in at number 11 with Notts on 74-9, he hit 66 and combined with Chris Read to add 135 for the tenth wicket.
Stemp was a regular in the Nottinghamshire limited-overs side in each of his three seasons with the County. He played in 48 matches and claimed 48 wickets. His best figures of 4-25 came at Trent Bridge against Somerset in the Norwich Union League in June 2001.
Richard Stemp played his final games in a Notts shirt in July 2001, with his time at Trent Bridge ending in injury. After being sidelined for over a month of the season with a broken right thumb, he then broke his left thumb in his comeback match for the Second Eleven and missed the rest of the season.
Stemp joined Leicestershire for the 2002 season but played just twice before ending his professional career with more than 500 wickets in all forms of cricket. He continued in league cricket for many years, playing for Northampton Saints in the Northamptonshire Premier League.
June 2020
Nottinghamshire First-Class Number: 549