Chris Martin (cricketer)

Christopher Stewart "Chris" Martin (born 10 December 1974) is a New Zealand cricketer. A right-arm fast-medium bowler, Martin played provincial cricket for Auckland, having formerly played for the Canterbury Wizards.

He also signed for the English county cricket side, Warwickshire, for their 2008 domestic campaign and played one first-class match for Essex in 2010. In 1999 he played a season of club cricket in Scotland for Heriots FP Cricket Club.

He retired from all cricket in late 2013.

Martin is one of four New Zealand Test cricketers to have taken 200 wickets. In 2011 he was recognised as New Zealand's premier cricketer, when he was awarded the inaugural Sir Richard Hadlee Medal, at the New Zealand cricket awards ceremony. Although predominantly a Test bowler, Martin moved back into contention for One Day Internationals after International Cricket Council rule changes permitted substitutions during games. Although the rule has since been revoked, Martin has remained on the fringes of the ODI squad and was called up to the New Zealand World Cup 2007 squad, as a replacement for the injured Daryl Tuffey.

Martin is an archetypal tail-end batsman. His batting gets more publicity than his bowling. Martin has the rather dubious honour of belonging to a select group of cricketers whose number of wickets taken exceeds runs scored; Bhagwat Chandrasekhar is the only other cricketer to have achieved this “honour” (assuming a qualification of 30 Tests played), and only Alf Hall and Holcombe “Hopper” Read – both of whom played when pitches were uncovered – have played Test cricket and finished with a lower first-class batting average. Martin also holds the record for the most pairs recorded in Test match history(7).