About Matt Prior
Matthew James Prior is a South African-born English former cricketer, who played for England in Test cricket and for Sussex County Cricket Club in domestic cricket. He was a wicket-keeper and his aggressive right-handed batting enabled him to open the innings in ODI matches, even though he made very limited appearances in shorter forms of the game. With an international Test debut score of 126, Prior became the first English wicket-keeper to hit a century in his debut match in early 2007. His glovework, however, was criticised. Despite a successful tour of Sri Lanka with the bat, Prior's keeping was less successful, and he was dropped from the team for the 2008 tour of New Zealand. He returned for the 2008 series against South Africa, and was retained into 2009, where he became the second-fastest England keeper to reach 1,000 Test runs, behind Les Ames. He retired in June 2015 from all forms of professional cricket due to a recurring Achilles tendon injury. In 2005 Matt made fewer runs, with 874, but also became Sussex's first choice wicket-keeper again after having shared duties with Tim Ambrose in the two previous seasons. Matt has won the County Championship three times (2003, 2006 and 2007) although in 2007 Matt did not take part as much as before due to his England duties. In the opening match of the series he made 45 while opening the batting as England won the match by 42 runs.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.