Gary Palmer (cricketer)

Gary Vincent Palmer (born 15 November 1965) played first-class and List A cricket for Somerset from 1982 to 1989. He also played for the England Young Cricketers side in both under-19 Test and One-day International matches. He was born at Taunton, Somerset and is the son of the former Somerset and England Test cricketer Ken Palmer.

Palmer was a lower order right-handed batsman and a right-arm medium-pace bowler. He made his first-class and List A cricket debuts as a 16-year-old for Somerset in 1982, making 27 in the second innings of his first first-class game. In 1983, he played in 10 first-class games and made both his highest score and took his career-best innings return in the season. In only his third first-class match, against Gloucestershire at Bristol, he made 78 and put on 124 for the seventh wicket with Peter Denning. Then, in the last match of the season against Warwickshire he took five wickets for 38 runs in the first innings, and this would be the only five-wicket haul of his first-class career.

In 1984, with Somerset's overseas players Viv Richards and Joel Garner absent playing for the West Indies touring team, Palmer played fairly regularly for both the first-class and List A sides. Wisden noted, though, that he "did not make the progress hoped for" and that, though "a spirited competitor, he possible needs more positive thought and application to bring greater consistency". In 16 first-class games, he hit 299 runs at an average of 16.61 with only one score of more than 50 and took 30 wickets at an average of 41.03 runs per wicket. Success was even more elusive in the one-day games: in 20 matches, he took only nine wickets at an average of more than 70 runs per wicket.