Born On This Day: 18th January

Gareth Berg was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1981. He is an all-rounder who played for Middlesex from 2008- 2014 and joined Hampshire in 2015.

In the late 1990s, he played age-group cricket in South Africa, then from 2003, club cricket in Northamptonshire and the Home Counties. In 2008, he played for Middlesex in three Championship, and six limited-overs matches, after which he became a regular player. He also played for Italy in T20 matches from 2011-2014 and in the 50-over World Cup Challenge in December 2019.

In 2015 he joined Hampshire, and apart from an injury in 2016, was a regular player in all three formats until 2019 when he moved to Northamptonshire on loan, mid-season. He joined them permanently for the 2020 season.

In first-class cricket, he has scored two centuries, but is rather unlucky that his best scores for Hampshire were 99 v Sussex in 2015 and 99* v Yorkshire in 2017. He scored 1959 first-class runs for Hampshire at 27.59 and took 125 wickets at 31.34 with a best of 6-56 v Yorkshire in 2016.

In limited-overs cricket he took 46 wickets for the county, plus 26 in the T20. He was a member of the Hampshire sides that beat Kent in the List A Lord’s Final in 2019, then lost to Somerset in the following year.

Also today: Edgar Sheldrake (1884-1885) & Henry Soames (1867).